Recently I was faced with a dilemma. During my habitual trawl through Twitter, I read an interesting Hootsuite post about writing a social media policy for staff. This happens to be an element of one of the services we provide to our clients – it’s important to have guidelines so that staff are clear about what they can and can’t use the company name for on social media and help to avoid PR slip ups.

I thought the article was a good read and was about to retweet when the thought crossed my mind – if I share the “secrets” to some of our consultancy advice, does this undermine the services we charge for?

My hesitation lasted only a few seconds – firstly our company ethos is centred around a desire to be helpful.

Secondly, if a client wanted to google “social media policy” and write one themselves they could find the article in seconds. The point of being a consultant is to make resources accessible to clients and then guide them through how to use them or amend for their purposes. The reason lots of our clients engage with us is to save them the effort of searching themselves.

Thirdly, it’s possible that a prospective client might see my post, think “how helpful, they must know their stuff” and engage with us on something else.

The moral of the story? Let’s take the mystery out of marketing by making it easier for small businesses to do themselves, if they have the time and inclination to do it. If not, they can call HeyStrategy (then I clicked retweet!)

Interested in how useful marketing can replace the hard sell? I highly recommend reading Youtility by Jay Baer.

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You’ve started the new year with a fresh optimism for growing your business. You know that you need to get better at promoting your products or services and engaging more with your customers, but you just aren’t sure where to start.

We’ve put together a list of books that can help you understand, refine and implement your marketing goals this year*

*if you don’t have time or inclination to read them all, rest assured that we already have, and you can get us on your team to do your marketing for you!

Youtility: Why smart marketing is about help, not hype

https://www.youtilitybook.com/

Jay Baer’s great little book from 2013 is an ideal place to start thinking about marketing your SME. The basic principle is that the best marketing doesn’t shout about why you should buy a particular product, it provides helpful information to help the consumer make up their mind, and then positions itself so that it’s the obvious choice when it comes to the purchase.

Everybody Writes: Your Go-to guide for creating ridiculously good content

Ann Handley is the content writing guru. By now you’ll have heard how crucial “Content Marketing” is, but you might not know what “content” is or how to generate it. Handley reminds us that everybody writes – all the time (emails, letters, notes, Instagram captions) – and it’s easier than you think to start writing. The book also includes plenty of examples of common grammatical missteps and ways to communicate clearly and effectively.

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World 

Gary Vaynerchuck (or Gary Vee as he’s known) is not everyone’s cup of tea, but he knows his stuff and has been very successful in building his own businesses. This book (buy the hardback if you can) is a comprehensive visual guide to using marketing and social media to tell your story in the most effective way, providing loads of full colour examples, each annotated and examined to rate its effectiveness. If you can cope with his full on, enthusiastic writing style, his original marketing guide Crushing It is also worth investing in.

New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, Newsjacking, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly

Now in its 6th edition, David Meerman Scott’s bestseller covers the fundamentals of marketing and PR in our brave new technological world. The old rules of print advertising and hard selling no longer apply and this book explains why, and what you can do now to reach your audience.

Digital Marketing for Dummies

You’re probably familiar with the Dummies format – yellow cover, thin paper and lots of bullet points – and Ryan Deiss’s Digital Marketing installment doesn’t disappoint. If you’re completely new to the concept to marketing then there are worse places to start. You might skip some of the more technical chapters initially but there are useful explanations of different channels, concepts and ideas which you can quickly turn into practical tools for your business.

At HeyStrategy we’re firm believers in continuous learning, and love sharing our knowledge with our clients, helping them to learn how to tackle their own marketing or choosing the best time to engage with a consultant to take care of some of the most important elements. If you want to get your year off to the best start, or just want to talk about an interesting concept that you’ve read about, drop me a line: sarah@heystrategy.com

The post Top Marketing books to read appeared first on HeyStrategy.

Well I’m pleased to report that after the first year, nothing bad happened. In fact loads of good has happened, including a tiny bundle of four-pawed fun. But more of that in a later post…

Let’s go back to 2017 and those first few weeks adapting to a completely new way of working and learning loads of new technical stuff (no mean feat for a 33 year old!).

Part One – the day to day:

Leaving the routine and discipline of a 9-5 job in an office was daunting. I knew I’d miss the interaction with my colleagues, the comfort of a schedule, the clearly defined objectives and goals. But what I actually missed most was the tiny things – having someone to share a problem with and chat ideas through over a coffee. As it turned out, chatting my new HeyStrategy team on Slack came very naturally (I was a teenager during the MSN Messenger craze!) and being away from the constant bustle and chatter of an open plan office made me feel much calmer and a lot more productive.

Getting motivated to start work was tricky too. Not known for my morning energy, I warm up by mid-morning and am most effective in the afternoon. Needing to report for duty in an office by 8.30am in an office was an obvious motivator to get up and doing, but not expressly having to get up and go anywhere other than the next room was a bit of a challenge!

Here’s how I got started working from home:

Step one: get out the paintbrushes and smarten up our box room to create a lovely office that I wanted to spend time in and create a quiet, organised space to get things done.

Step two: steal my boyfriend’s routine and get up while he gets ready for work. Behave exactly as if preparing to leave the house – get dressed, brush hair, get snacks and drinks ready. Then when he leaves, make a coffee to take for the commute (up the stairs) and shut the office door behind you.

Step three: embrace the opportunity to take a break to go out for a walk at 10.30am (or any time) if you want to. Because we’re clocking our billable hours with Harvest, I can manage my schedule to fit around when I work best. If my mind drifts mid-morning and I’m not achieving anything, it’s in everyone’s best interest (particularly the clients!) if I stop the clock and start again later when I’m super-focussed and productive. This means I can often be found at my desk in the evenings but that’s when I do some of my best thinking.

Step four: draw the line between “home” and “work”. It’s hard to switch off when you’re on a roll with a project or your head is full of ideas. Create a clear boundary between work stopping and play starting. Decide what time you want to finish working and then schedule something like a call with a friend or heading out to pick up some food, pack up your desk and close the door of the office behind you. Try to turn off phone notifications if you can and remember that almost everything can wait until the morning.

With the ideal work environment set up, I was now ready to get stuck into the slightly more daunting aspect – learning how to design and update websites (spoiler: it’s loads easier than I thought and really fulfilling!)

Find out more next month in the next instalment!

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Here are our quick tips for SMEs to kick-start your marketing this year:

1)     Update your business plan

Before you even think about spending time on marketing and PR, you need to decide what direction you want your business to take this year. You need to know what your business goals are and how effective marketing can help you get there. If you try to start building a website or posting on social media without clear goals in mind, you’re wasting your precious time.

2)     Create your marketing strategy

Now you know what outcomes you need for your business and what products/services you want to promote, you need to figure out what marketing tools can help to achieve it. Plan out milestones, major events and targets on a calendar for the year. If you have the budget, working with a Marketing Consultant will help to clarify what’s possible and work out an effective marketing strategy.

3)     Establish your brand, tone and message

A really strong brand identity which carries across your website, logo, print and social media accounts will help your audience to quickly recognise who you are and anything associated with your brand.

4)     Decide on your tone and key messages

To establish credibility and drive engagement, your audience need to know who you are, what you do and why you do it (your message). The way you talk about yourself (tone) is key to helping your audience decide if what you do is right for them.

5)     Start marketing

The key to effective marketing is planning, and by now you’re fully prepared to start putting your plans into action. Decide how much time you can afford to spend (or afford to pay someone to do it for you), and ensure that your activities are focussed, high quality and consistent.

6)     Review, tweak, repeat (or bin)

With a couple of weeks’ marketing activity under your belt, you will start to see what’s working and what’s not. Repeat the activities that are helping to achieve your goals and either bin or refine the ones that aren’t. Tools like analytics and customer feedback will help you to identify this.

Our team of marketing consultants can help at any stage of this process (although sooner is usually better!), putting together a strategic plan or carrying out the day to day implementation of actions.

With a range of packages to suit any budget, there’s no reason that your business can’t have a marketing manager this year, without having to recruit a full-time member of staff. Drop me a line sarah@heystrategy.com or 07715 493843 for a no obligation chat.

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