Mailchimp Classic Automations are going - here's what to do!

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Most Dedicated Content Writer 2024

 

Jane Rogers PR has been awarded Most Dedicated Content Writer 2024 at the SME News UK Enterprise Awards.

Organised by SME News earlier this year, The UK Enterprise Awards celebrate the outstanding excellence of businesses right across the UK. Now in their eighth year, the awards once again received an incredible number of nominations from businesses that prioritise respect, innovation and excellence.

Among this year’s winners, Jane Rogers was chosen as Most Dedicated Content Writer of 2024.

 

Speaking about her award, Jane said:

 

“I was beyond excited to hear I’d won this award! To be recognised as the most dedicated content writer in 2024 is a fantastic achievement for both me personally and for my business. I’m thrilled I was nominated and even more delighted when I heard I’d won! A big thank you to the judges for chosing me as this year’s winner in this category.

“I love writing sparkling content for my clients, as well as sharing my expertise through workshops, talks and training sessions. To have my dedication formally acknowledged is the greatest form of appreciation. And being able to say I’m an award winner is a brilliant accolade for my business and my clients. 

“Now, I’m excited to continue providing my content writing services and developing my workshops, coaching, training and talks to help even more small business owners with their content marketing in future.”

 

About SME News

SME News is dedicated to helping promote and grow small businesses with audiences all over the world. Their goal is to provide useful insights and advice to entrepreneurs and start-ups by providing a reliable platform to gain vital support. 

 

Want to get on top of your own content writing? Book a planning session with Jane or buy her content planner. You’ll also find her monthly newsletter packed with marketing tips useful. Sign up to her mailing list so you don’t miss out.

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At my mid-year marketing review workshop

At my recent mid-year marketing review workshop in June, I held a productive session for a small group of local business owners. We each reviewed our marketing achievements so far for the year. Then we celebrated our successes!

 
Celebrating your successes is so important, don’t you think? How often do you go from one thing to the next without stopping and taking stock? 

 

That’s why I wanted to run a mid-year marketing review workshop, so that it gave everyone who attended the opportunity to think about what they’ve been doing. I recently wrote about the importance of reviewing your content goals, so this workshop was the next step in actually doing so.

 

We started by looking at what had worked and what hadn’t. Then we gave ourselves a pat on the back for everything we’d done.

 

Even when things haven’t gone so well, it’s still worth noting it down. Then you can work out why it didn’t go so well. Perhaps it was lack of time on your part? Or maybe you didn’t have the right tools or knowledge.

 

What have you achieved lately? Write it down and then celebrate it.

 

Goal setting for the next half of the year

After the celebrations, we each set a marketing goal for the remaining half of the year.

From posting more on Tiktok to creating a lead magnet, setting up email marketing or building a website, we each came up with a SMART goal. That’s a goal which is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timebound.

Then, I gave everyone the time to work out the steps they needed to achieve their goal. They each came up with a list and shared it with the group.

 

 

Being accountable for mid-year marketing goals

Sometimes we all need a nudge to get things done. So, I held everyone accountable for the first step they said they would take towards achieving their goal. And then I contacted them a couple of weeks later to see how they were getting on!

I’m pleased to report that everyone was working well towards their goal and that they’d all mostly achieved their first step:

• 2 have already done their ‘one thing’
• 2 are working through it and have achieved part of it
• 1 is in progress

Don’t worry, I shall be keeping up with each of them to see how much further they get!

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I recently wrote some small charity PR tips for the Givey fundraising website. Here’s an extract from my article.

As a small charity, it’s easy to think that you might get overlooked by donors or that it’s difficult to promote what you do, compared to the bigger, household names. But there are plenty of things you can do – here are my top tips:

1. Act big and be consistent

Just because you’re a small charity doesn’t mean you can’t act like a big one to market yourselves. You don’t need a big budget to ensure your branding and messaging are consistent. Do you have a good, responsive website? Are your logo and branding consistent everywhere you use them?

2. Have a plan

If you don’t have a plan for raising awareness of your charity, how are your potential donors and supporters going to find out about you? By having a clear plan, you’ll know what you need to do and when.

3. Reach the right people

Who is your target audience? What age/gender are they? Where are they based? What interests are important to them that will resonate with what you do? By honing this down, you will be able to establish where best and how to reach them.

4. Get your existing supporters involved

The people you help and their families, your volunteers and donors are your biggest advocates. Write up some of their stories as case studies; ask them to speak on your behalf and spread the word about you; get them involved in activities that their friends and families can sponsor them for. But make it easy for them to stay ‘on-message’.

5. Tap into the news agenda

How can you piggyback on hot topics in the news? Offering up comment, advice or tips to journalists related to current news topics is an excellent way of demonstrating your expertise. Don’t forget awareness days and weeks too.

For the full article and to download The Givey Digest, packed with advice from other charity experts, go to https://blog.givey.com/2018/06/06/the-givey-digest-2018/ 

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I was a member a few years ago but found I wasn’t making the most of it. I wasn’t using their services and there weren’t any local member events at the time. So, I gave up my membership for a while.

Why I re-joined the FSB

However, there have been notable changes in the last couple of years since I gave up membership. New advisor Piyush Patel has recently been making a huge effort to engage local businesses. He has been visible at many local networking events, talking a lot about the benefits of membership. He and FSB Regional Chairman, Chandra Sharma, have also been putting on lots of local, good quality networking events within the Bromley borough.

How using PR is helping them

In my opinion, Piyush has been doing a fantastic PR job for the FSB! By being visible, reminding people he’s there and talking consistently about how the FSB helps, he is raising its profile and successfully recruiting new members. As well as welcoming back a few former members, like me!

Here’s a video Piyush recorded with me that explains how I help small businesses with their own marketing and PR:

Why join the FSB?

If you’re unfamiliar with the FSB, their website has a lot of useful information. For me, it’s important to have the backing of an organisation that helps fight for small businesses’ rights. The different services they offer are also worth the membership fee many times over, most of them for no additional cost. Services such as:

• Free business banking
• Cyber protection
• Debt recovery service
• Employment protection
• Health & Safety advice
• Insurance service
• Legal hub – with lots of factsheets and legal document templates
• Legal protection scheme
• Tax investigation protection

But, for me, the overriding reason to join was that I have confidence in the new local set up with regular networking events and introductions to relevant member businesses who might benefit me, or who I might also be able to help. I look forward to getting to know Piyush better, so he can continue to use his PR skills for mine and other businesses’ benefit.

If you are interested in finding out more or joining the FSB yourself, contact Piyush.

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Here’s what you need to know for free accounts

Mailchimp recently announced some major changes to the way it operates. No longer simply an email marketing tool, the platform now offers an all-in-one Marketing Platform, as it calls it. This includes the ability to create landing pages, Facebook and Google ads and postcards directly within the platform.

However, this transformation means Mailchimp is now also changing the way it charges you for its services. If you’ve got a free account, you will notice the biggest impact.

The free account still exists and you can still have up to 2,000 contacts in it. BUT, the way Mailchimp categorises your contacts is changing. So, if you’re close to the 2,000-mark, you’ll want to take note, to avoid getting charged unnecessarily.

If you are already using some of the features that are being removed from free accounts, most of these will be ‘grandfathered’ in – you will still have access to them where set up but you won’t be able to add new ones.

As many of my clients are using free Mailchimp accounts, here are the main changes you need to know:

The way contacts are categorised

This is the biggest change to Mailchimp and will have an impact on both free and paid accounts. Up until now, the system only counted your subscribers in your contact count. From 15 June 2019, subscribers, unsubscribes and non-subscribes (those whose info you might have for non-email purposes such as postcards) count towards your total.

What this means: you’re more likely to reach the 2,000 contact limit quicker. To avoid getting caught out, go through your contacts and get rid of any you don’t need. If you have lots of unsubscribes, you can now archive these, so they don’t count towards your total.

Archiving is better than deleting because it will still keep the data so you can’t accidentally send to someone who has chosen to unsubscribe from your list. And you can un-archive contacts at a later date if you need them back in your active contacts.

No more unlimited templates

When the changes come into effect later this month, you will only be able to choose from the five basic templates in a free account. This will be fine for most people, as you can still customise the templates with your branding, colours, images etc.

What this means: any existing templates that you’ve been using, including custom HTML templates, which are not from the basic range will still be available to you. But you will only be able to create new ones from the basic range going forward, unless you upgrade your account.

Only one user

Up to now, you have been able to add multiple users to your free account (did you realise this?). Any users you already have will remain but you won’t be able to add new ones unless you upgrade your plan.

However, if you have a PR or marketing person like me, an agency or virtual assistant helping you with your Mailchimp, you can still add them as a user providing they have an agency account. Here’s how they can turn on agency status if they don’t already have it.

Only one audience

As with users, you have been able to add as many lists (audiences) as you wanted. But now free accounts are limited to one list. Any lists you have already will remain but you won’t be able to create new lists going forward.

Single automations

Automation for free accounts was only introduced a short while ago, so many of you may not be using them anyway. If you are using them, your existing automations will remain but you can only create single-step automations going forward.

What this means: you can automate one email sequence to go out, such as a thank you or welcome email when someone signs up to your list or downloads your lead magnet or free giveaway. It is possible to create more complex automations with workarounds. See Robin Adams’ Mailchimp Answers blog for more information on this.

These are the main changes affecting free Mailchimp accounts. If you have a paid for account, there will be less impact to you, especially as the pricing structure is now simplified.

For more information on the changes to paid accounts and how these might affect you, see Robin Adams’ Mailchimp Answers blog or join his Mailchimp Answers Facebook Group.

If you would like help managing your Mailchimp account, writing or sending newsletters or email marketing, drop me a line.

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As a small business there are so many ways you can improve the quality of your website’s SEO. We have to face the fact that there isn’t a one-stop fix to get you to the top of Google’s first page of results. However, the good news is that every small change and tweak you make to your website is going to have a positive impact. Here’s some great ways all local businesses can adopt the written content of their websites to help themselves be found online.

1. Location, location, location

Search engines are very capable of finding local information, and today about 50% of all searches made online have some degree of local interest. So, it’s your job to make it clear where your business is located. Think about the size of area you serve. Perhaps you’re a Kent-based business that services all of the South East. Explain this at various points across your website and don’t rely on just your address to explain where you reach.

Make sure your business name, address and phone number (NAP) are correct on your site, and if you are listed on Google My Business don’t forget to request an update when any of these change. Help Google more by adding your location(s) to your website’s footer, so it appears on every page. Also, if you’re using a serviced office in another location make sure that address is also added.

2. Know your keywords

Whatever you may hear to the contrary, keywords are still one of the most important elements in helping Google find your website. No longer do you have to put strings of single words and phrases into the back-end. Instead, the challenge is to incorporate them naturally into the written content on the public-facing page itself. You’ll also want to repeat them about three times every 100 words so that Google will recognise them as being significant.

When researching keywords, think as laterally as possible. Consider what you already know about your products and services. Check in the Acquisition area of your Google Analytics to discover what words people are searching for when they come to your website via a search engine. You’ll also want to draw up a list of synonyms, to find ways to describe something that will suit a broad range of search terms.

3. Worth chasing the Long Tail!

The concept of long-tail keywords has been a factor for improving SEO for many years and was first coined in an article in Wired Magazine in 2004. Today’s interest in local searches means that they are now probably more important than ever before. Long-tail keywords are much more targeted than the general keywords that every page needs to have. They answer a very specific information request and can be used by people who know what they are looking for and therefore are nearer to a conversion.

Here’s an example of how you can use keywords to produce long-tail keywords. Let’s imagine you have a website offering ukulele lessons. General keywords may be ‘ukulele lessons’ and ‘ukulele lessons Bromley’. Then longer keyword phrases could be ‘ukulele lessons for beginners in Bromley’, ‘take ukulele lessons if you’d love to play an instrument’, ‘easy to learn ukulele lessons taught in Bromley’, ‘learn music the easy way and have ukulele lessons in Bromley’.

4. Be the Authority

There are a great many ways you can positively impact the authority of your website. Having incoming links to your website from trusted listing websites will improve your website’s Domain Authority ranking – a score of quality that each website is given. The higher it is, the more it positively influences you reaching the number one position on Google. Ensuring you’re describing your company consistently across your business will grow your Brand Authority.

And the authority doesn’t stop there. The quality of the content on your website helps show Google that you are an authority. Make sure your page content is genuine to you. Don’t be scared of writing too much, but don’t ramble. Around 300 words per page is about ideal or write more to a length that’s appropriate if the topic demands it.

If your website is primarily a portfolio of images, make sure that you include at least one paragraph of text, with keywords, at the top of each page. The search engines prioritise information gleaned from page content over any image naming conventions.

5. Manage the back-end of your website

Hopefully, we’ll soon be at a stage where every website is running a Content Management System (CMS), allowing you easy access to change the text. The other great bonus feature of a CMS is its functionality for setting up key SEO assets such as Title Tags, Alt Tags, naming images and creating page URLs. Follow the guidance your CMS gives and don’t leave any of these fields blank. They really are an important part of helping the search engine understand what your website is about.

If you’re using a WordPress site (like this one), then make sure you activate the Yoast SEO plugin (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast). It’s easy-to-interpret health-check feature assesses a broad range of factors and scores them as Red, Amber or Green for SEO. This makes making improvements really fast and effective.

As you can see, there are so many ways you can improve your on-page SEO and help your business. However you start, start today.

 About Rachel…

Rachel Hodges has been a copywriter for many brands including luxury retailers Harrods and Selfridges and managed and improved websites for organisations in a variety of sectors including online retail, B2B consultants and the professional service industries.

Through training and consultancy in SEO and content writing, Rachel supports SMEs to achieve greater understanding and improved results. She works with businesses building their first website or those wanting to take their current site to the next level.

If you’d like to chat with Rachel on anything related to content writing and strategy email: rachel@rachelhodges.co.uk, call 07961 543 597 or visit www.rachelhodges.co.uk.

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How PR can help your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Following my recent talk for Networking Cupper on how PR can help your search engine optimisation, I’ve turned my talk into some top tips.

1. PR is part of your off-page SEO

PR is about raising awareness of what you do, helping others to recognise your brand. By its very nature, PR activity has the potential to drive customers to your website. You might hear this referred to as off-page SEO.

Off-page SEO is essentially anything you do outside of your website to help improve its search engine rankings. This includes things like link building and social media traffic. It also includes PR and marketing activity.

Whether you are publicising your business through media coverage, social media, leaflets, brochures, networking, email marketing or any other PR or marketing activity, this can help prospective customers find your website.

Tip: Be sure to include your website address in your marketing materials and email signatures.

2. PR and SEO need great content

Most of us working in PR spend a lot of time creating content for our clients to tell their story or position them as an expert. And Google loves great, authentic, original content. When search engines are trawling the web to index websites, they look for fresh content and will rank pages according to their relevance on certain topics or keywords.

So it makes sense to ensure your website has plenty of great content relevant to your business. This not only shows search engines that your website is worth indexing but also helps to position you as an authority on your subject area. After all, more people are likely to buy from you if they trust you know what you’re talking about.

The best way to add regular content to your site, aside from the specific pages that talk about your business and its products or services, is by keeping a blog. According to Hubspot, 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog.

Your content needs to include your keywords but don’t stuff it jam-packed full of them – search engines are now wise to this ‘over-optimising’ and will penalise you. It’s more important to write naturally, for the reader. Write as if you were in conversation with your customer, talking directly to them.

Tip: keep your content regularly updated with new blog posts and/or a social media feed, such as Twitter, embedded in your site.

3. Media coverage creates authority links

Generating media coverage is an excellent way to boost your search engine optimisation.  This is because search engines trust the content on authority websites such as news or lifestyle sites. Links back to your website from these sites (which have great SEO themselves) signal to the likes of Google that your content can be trusted too.

Media coverage is third-party endorsement for your business or brand. People take more notice of editorial content than they do of paid adverts. The added benefit of online coverage is that endorsement is a key factor in how search engines decide to index and rank websites.

So getting some coverage for your business raises your profile and gives more visibility to your website.

Tip: the more influential the site where you get some coverage (e.g. a national newspaper, the BBC, a well-known blog etc.), the more highly search engines will regard your site.

4. Get your business on listings sites

In the same way that links back from media coverage help to improve your search engine optimisation, so too do links from well-regarded listings sites and directories. They’re another way of raising the profile of your business and therefore a key PR tool.

There are plenty of listings sites around, both for your industry and your geographical area. Getting listed on Google is the obvious one to start with. If you’re registered with any professional  or membership bodies, make sure you’re listed on their directories, like I am with the Public Relations Consultants Association.

Check out what’s available to you locally as well. Sites such as The Best Of or TownTalk for your area are a good place to start but there will be those specific to your locality such as Beckenham.net or WoW Bromley here in Bromley. Some of these sites will also let you put up your own news or blog posts.

Tip: make sure what you write for each directory listing varies slightly and provide a link back to your website.

5. Get recommended!

We all know the power of word-of-mouth and recommendations. How many clients have you got because someone has recommended you? Capturing these recommendations or testimonials online is a powerful way of promoting your business and will, of course, help with your search engine optimisation.

People take note of other people’s opinions. How often do you look at reviews on TripAdvisor or Amazon before you buy something? The same goes for your business. And the beauty of online recommendations is that they’re also third-party endorsements in the same way media coverage is. Because someone puts up the review or recommendation themselves, others are more inclined to believe it.

Tip: your customers can leave reviews for you on some of the listings sites mentioned above, as well as on social media like your Facebook business page, Google My Business page or LinkedIn. WoW Bromley even pulls in social media reviews into your local listing.

So there you have it, my tips for using PR to help boost your search engine optimisation. Have you already tried any of them? There are many more things you can do, of course. To help you understand more about SEO, I have invited local SEO specialist Rachel Hodges to write a guest blog for me in May.

Don’t miss Rachel’s blog post; add yourself to my mailing list to receive it as soon as it’s published.

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My recent survey on small business PR and marketing habits has revealed that more than half of micro businesses lack a PR strategy or marketing plan for promoting themselves.

Survey respondents revealed that 60% do no planning for their marketing or PR. However, the good news is that, among those who do plan, some 20% say they review their PR strategy regularly.

The survey also revealed that most micro businesses in the Bromley area (those with 1-5 employees or sole-traders) do their own PR or marketing (80%) and that the main channels they use are social media (100%), their websites (80%) and business cards (73%).

Considering that most small businesses, especially one-man or one-woman bands, are pushed for time and resources, it’s natural to want to do their own marketing. While this approach will save money, it means their marketing might be haphazard and therefore not as effective as that done by a specialist, ultimately affecting the bottom line.

Failing to plan is planning to fail

The big risk when doing your own marketing without a strategy is that you might find you’re only pursuing new clients when you need them. This means you could miss out on opportunities to grow your business. Instead, planning and investing in a constant stream of activity will help to keep your business ticking along nicely and avoid those peaks and troughs.

Planning how you will promote your business is key to helping you raise your profile and generating more leads. Knowing what you’re going to do and when helps you stay organised and ensure you’ve a constant flow of marketing activity happening. It also helps you deal with the unexpected.

The survey results

Here are the key figures broken down in more detail:

• Most do their own marketing (80%)
• Most don’t have a strategy (60%), however those that do and review it regularly 20%
• 100% use social media, 80% a website, 73% business cards, 46% blog, 40% email marketing
• The most popular social media tools are: Facebook page, Twitter, LinkedIn & Pinterest
• Businesses are interested in: strategy development (50%), blogs, social media support & developing materials (each 35.7%)

Competition winner

As a thank you for responding to the survey, I held a prize-draw for a free PR planning session with me (worth £160.00). I’m delighted to announce that the winner of that session is Jane Altree of Altree Rose baby massage and reflexology. I look forward to working with Jane and giving her some constructive ways to help her promote her business.

Want to get on top of your own PR and marketing? To book your 2-hour PR planning session with me, contact me now. You’ll also find my monthly newsletter packed with PR tips helpful. Sign up to my mailing list so you don’t miss out.

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“Spring forward, fall back.” How many of us remember whether the clocks go back or forward this way?  In case you haven’t heard by now, we’ll enter British Summer Time (BST), and lose an hour’s sleep in the process, this coming Sunday, 30th March.

Most people probably know we change the clocks to make the most of the longer daylight hours in the spring and summer months. But did you know the idea is only just over 100 years old?

Until I did a bit of research for this post, I thought we’d had Daylight Saving Time (as British Summer Time is also known) for much longer than that. And I was particularly interested to learn that the man who proposed the idea, a keen horse rider William Willett, was local to Bromley, riding regularly through Chislehurst and Petts Wood!

While we’ll all get an hour less in bed on Sunday, I think it’s a small price to pay for lighter evenings and the general optimistic feel we get with springtime, longer days and the hope of a forthcoming good summer.

Mother’s Day

Sunday 30th March is also Mother’s Day in the UK, so I think the hour less in bed this weekend is a bit harsh on mums and kids everywhere. Don’t make it harder on your mum by forgetting that the clocks go forward!

Don’t let it affect your business!

Seriously though, forgetting about the change in the hour could have serious consequences for your business and its reputation. PR is about maintaining a good reputation, after all. What will existing clients or potential new customers think if you turn up late or don’t deliver projects on time because you’re still an hour behind everyone else?

It might sound obvious, but there are some simple things you can do to ensure you don’t miss out or affect your business:

• Change your office clocks early – before you leave on Friday evening, go round your office and change any clocks to the new time. That way, they’ll all be displaying the correct time when you come back in on Monday morning.
• Remind all your staff that the clocks will be changing – tell them verbally if you can, and get them to add a reminder to their phones and calendars.
• Don’t schedule early Monday meetings – it will take most of us a few days to adjust to the loss of an hour, so don’t schedule any crucial meetings for first thing on Monday. That way, even if you or any colleagues are a little late, they shouldn’t miss out on anything vital.
• Be prepared at home – change all your clocks at home before you go to bed on Saturday night and set yourself an alarm!
• Check your gadgets – most electronic devices and computers automatically update themselves to BST these days, but you may still have some that don’t, so do a quick manual check.

Of course, if you have the luxury of lying in on Sunday morning, you shouldn’t have to worry too much. But don’t forget to wish your mum, grandma or other female relatives who are mothers a Happy Mother’s Day. Perhaps not too early…

Image courtesy of Danilin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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