Generalists see the big picture

Yes you could hire a copywriter to sit in their shed and write 3000 words of copy. But what good is that if it doesn’t fit into your wider communications plan? Generalists understand the strategic importance of your marketing for business objectives and how it all fits in to the bigger picture. They know what they do impacts the rest of the business and ensure that impact is a brilliant one.

Generalists can be flexible

If you want to hire a freelancer for a long term relationship it can be beneficial to choose a generalist. They can remain adaptable and flexible to serving your business as needs develop and change, delivering the right service at any one time, in an agile way. Without the need for you to onboard someone new to your business.

Generalists bring a different perspective

If generalists work in different sectors they can often bring ideas from one to another. This boosts creativity and can bring a fresh perspective to your field. You want your business to be uniue and innovative, and that outside in approach can help you do just that. Full-stack employees are prized by companies like Google because they believe “innovation is found at the boundaries between disciplines.”

Generalists are great at leading teams

Because generalists can apply their skills to a range of issues, they tend to have a good understanding of the different roles that people in a team can play. They’ve been there. This makes them great at leading teams and building strategies for success. They have a variety of experiences and each one of them shapes their approach and understanding of what makes people tick.

What do you think? Generalist vs specialist? I’ve written about why you don’t need a niche here. Let me know!

If that all sounds a bit meta, I promise you it’s super practical and packed with ideas.

Join me, Francesca Baker, for a workshop focused on how to market your workshops. Whether you’re running writing workshops, poetry sessions, an expressive arts series or something entirely new and cool, this workshop will help you reach audiences and sell tickets.

We will cover

• Finding your target audience
• Writing engaging copy
• Using social media
• Growing your personal brand
• Potential partnerships

My skillset and experience are varied – covering copywriting, journalism, marketing, research and PR – but always centred around communication and creating a connection. Ultimately, I work with stories – and creating the right messages to resonate with an audience.

I’ve been working in marketing for over twelve years, with a particular passion for the arts. Clients include The National Lottery, The National Trust, Margate Bookie, Lapidus International, Moving Pieces, Fairtrade, Tesco, Mitsubishi, Carers Trust, Lord Mayor’s Appeal, Takeda, Diabetes UK, The Times, BBC, Metro, Stylist, Australia Times and more.

You can find out more at www.andsoshethinks.co.uk and follow me on all social media @andsoshethinks

Thursday 21 January 5pm-6pm

Saturday 23 January – 11am-12pm

Friday 5 February – 10am-11am

Cost is on a sliding scale.

• I’ll pay what I feel, thank you very much
• I’m nailing it this year, I’ll pay full whack – £15
• I know this is worth a lot, so I’ll pay a bit – £10
• Can’t quite stretch, so here’s a fiver – £5
• I’m a creative, I’m skint, but I’ll leave a review – free

Get your ticket here – https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-workshop-on-marketing-your-workshop-for-creatives-tickets-132707773523

How can I make Facebook advertising work?

Although it might not be cool to admit it, the majority of people in the UK are on Facebook, and spend a lot of time on it. For your advertising to work you need to be very specific with your targeting. Think about who your ideal customer is and target them. Whilst it can be tempting to just share your advert to all adults aged 18-60, that is too wide and will see you just wasting money. Also have a very clear call to action – if you want people to share your post, buy a ticket, or click a link, let them know.

How can I get more visitors to my website?

You’ve heard of SEO right? That’s search engine optimisation. It’s not the be all and end all, unlike what some people might make you think, but it is important. Basically it involves thinking of the kind of terms that someone looking for your business might search for, and adding them into your website copy and content (that’s the words!). So if you’re a carpenter in Kent, think ‘wooden furniture’ ‘carpenter Kent’ etc. What you really shouldn’t do though is stuff your content full of words so much that it feels stilted and unreadable. Because also what is key is keeping people on your website and getting them to take the actions you want them to. Google will also boost up the rankings websites that have a long dwell time, so don’t just think about getting people there, but also keeping them there.

How much personality should I add to my business?

I got told by a well known business coach that I needed to be more dry and corporate and have less personality, if I wanted to attract dry and corporate clients. Thing is, I don’t. Think about what your audience or client are like. If they’re chatty and laidback, try that approach. If they are more formal, adopt that tone. People like to work with and buy from people like them, so I think the best advice is to mirror them. That’s not to say you should reveal everything about yourself. Keep it professional. But you’re allowed to smile as well.

If you want me to help you with your marketing, do get in touch. I’d love to chat.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

It doesn’t have to be this way. All communication should evoke some kind of reaction, be it educative, informative, entertainment or emotion. This can’t happen unless there’s a bit of passion behind the words. A bit of creativity. Some life. It can be so easy to stick to the same formulas and language, yet this not only doesn’t benefit the client in the long run, it makes your working life a little bit dull.

What can we learn from creative writing for business writing? How can exercises usually reserved for fiction and poetry help our business writing? In more ways than you think.

Write a haiku

How often do you receive some communications from a company, and find that it’s drowning in jargon, technical language, figures and extended sentences – only discovering the thing that you actually want to know right at the end of the letter or information? Great fiction hits you from the off. The first chapter, even the first page, has to be compelling enough to make you keep on reading. When crafting your business copy try distilling down what you need to say in a haiku. With only 17 syllables to play with there’s no room to be vague.

Be active, not passive

‘We are trying…’ ‘You may find that…’ ‘We hope this will be…’ Passive verbs and soft language don’t really instil a customer with confidence. You don’t want to buy a product that the manufacturers have only tried to make work, or attend an event that may or may not be fun. Consumers need active assurance that the company have confidence and authority in what they are doing. When creating content it’s always wise to go through your text and remove all qualifiers (probably, may, expect etc) – don’t say what you might do, say what you will do. Make you or your brand the active subject – e.g. rather than ‘your digital marketing could become easier’ say ‘our software makes your marketing great.’ You want to action to take place as a result of your content, so you have to make it active.

Start with the character

The most crucial element of any story is the character. Who they are, how they act, and what happens to them is how plot develops. It’s also where the emotion is found. People connect with other people. As great as a company might think their product is, or as much as an agency may believe people are passionate about electricity, as loyal as a shop might think people are, the truth is that it’s about the person. So when writing a press release about why the new brand of bleach is a must have addition to the shopping basket, think of the benefits to the customer, the person. The new formula matters because it keeps the kitchen clean and protects their children. The fast acting ingredients free up their time to go out. Novelists say you should know everything about your character, even that which seems irrelevant to the writing at hand. Do the same for your reader. What is their name? What is in their bag? Do they wake up early or late? What do they like to read? Have they ever told a lie? What do they do on a Sunday afternoon? Do they prefer cryptic crosswords or su doku? Only when you know your reader and customer do you know what matters to them, and so how you can connect with them.

Connect

That’s the goal of any business. Ultimately relationships in all forms are about connection. When someone likes you or thinks you have something to offer, they will be prepared to invest their time – or money – in you. Customer can’t connect with inanimate objects, so you need to have some personality. What is your brand? What makes you different to everyone else out there? How do you speak and act? Bring this personality to all your writing. Don’t try to be professional at the expense of being emotional. People buy from people, so bring your personality to work.

First published on Start Ups Geek.

Here are a few tips:

1. Marketing isn’t a dirty word. Chances are that if you’ve written something, you want people to read it or hear it. It doesn’t have to be about making money. Marketing should be a fundamental part of your plan to develop your writing carer.
2. Have a website. It’s the first place people will come to find out about you. Make it clear who you are, what you do, the work you’ve done, and how people can get in touch. Have extracts of your work, links to buy your books, videos of your performances, and reviews or endorsements.
3. Get active on social media – but don’t try to do everything. Commit to a couple of platforms and post consistently and regularly. Make sure it’s not all promotional – connect with others, join conversations, and share posts. Aim for 70% engagement and 30% promotion.
4. Write for other blogs or magazines about things that are tangentially related to your work. Written historical fiction – position yourself as an expert on that period of history? Overcome adversity? Maybe people want to read about that. Not everything has to be overtly about pushing your book.
5. Think about building a writer brand, and see your work and performances as part of that. Don’t just pop up when you’ve got a book to plug, but see individual activities as part of the bigger campaign.

She describes herself as being a ‘cheerleader’ and that’s exactly the vibe you get from this book. It’s direct and laidback, at the same time as being authoritative and professional. There are exercises dotted in throughout, making sure that you take action and get results. Experts such as Nicola Brown, Eve Menezes Cunningham, Hazel Davis and more contribute, and there’s quotes and case studies from Natalie’s clients, a testament to the way she works and helps them achieve their aims.

The book feels awfully generous. Rather than self-aggrandising or promoting, saying that she is the PR person you must pay if you want to get results, Natalie offers everyone the opportunity to do their own PR. It’s like being let in on all the secrets. There’s a handy list of resources, and a glossary, for anyone not familiar with the language of the PR world. She brings you in, and makes you feel like one of the gang.

Empowering is a word that gets thrown around a lot, and has become a bit meaningless at times. But this book does exactly that. It inspires and empowers the reader to be their own PR expert – with Natalie cheering them on the whole time.