This year I (Claire) was lucky enough to go to America for my summer holidays. While there I discovered a delightful Mexican take-away restaurant chain called Chipotle (now open in London – hopefully they’ll come up north soon!) Even more delightful than their food was their packaging. Or rather, the words on their packaging. Chipotle has been running this ingenious campaign called ‘Cultivating Thought’ where some of the country’s leading authors and comedians prepare prose and words of wisdom for Chipotle’s paper cups and bags. They’re inspiring, often funny but mostly thought-provoking pieces about the foibles of human nature. A cup is a bizarre place to find life-shaping thoughts and ideas but, in the words of one of the writers,…

Getting your business featured in the media can be a great way to generate publicity. But where do you begin? It’s all starts with defining what media coverage would help you most. Businesses relying on local trade will need to look to the media outlets in their region. However, if you offer a service, you could gain exposure in your industry title by offering insightful comment on a topical issue. Becoming known as the ‘go to’ expert in your field can lead to valuable media coverage. Alternatively, if you sell a product, you’ll want to get featured (and photographed) in a title read by your target audience, such as a women’s lifestyle magazine. Once you’ve decided which media you’re targeting,…

Have you ever been in this scenario: Web designer: "Thank you for signing off the design of your new website, lovely customer. How are you getting on with the content?" You: "I’ve not started it yet, but it won’t take me long. I’ll get it to you by Friday." Web designer (Monday morning): "Hello customer, can you let me have that text for your website today, I’d like to get the site live for you." You: "Oh bother, I did mean to work on it but I couldn’t find the time… and then it was harder than I thought it would be… so I did something else instead." And so it goes on. For some inexplicable reason, it can be…

Thought leadership is about building a profile in your industry as the ‘go to’ expert on a particular topic.  Anyone who is truly an expert in their field can adopt a thought leadership approach. A thought leader will generate insights – usually articles, videos, Podcasts etc - which help their audience to gain a better understanding of a common problem, or a new way of looking at a particular issue. It doesn’t have to be time-consuming or complex. You could start out by simply producing a series of quality articles, guides or blog posts on topics that will help your audience. From there, you can build up a library of articles and resources which are housed on your website or…

Email marketing can be a powerful way to engage your existing and prospective customers. But with most people struggling to keep on top of their inboxes, it’s harder than ever to get attention. Here are five simple steps you can take to improve the results you get from email marketing. 1. Set up analytics While printed newsletters certainly have advantages, it’s difficult to monitor what recipients actually do with them. With email marketing, especially popular platforms such as MailChimp and Campaign Monitor, you get analytics so you can see within minutes how successful your email has been. This information should be used to inform future campaigns so, over time, you build up a picture of the sort of content your…