Fifteen Facts About Us For Anyone Who’s Interested

We talk about the importance of humanising brands all the time, and as we like to practice what we preach, here’s a little bit about us, minus our services and what we do. This isn’t a sales pitch piece, we promise. It’s a little bit about our story for anyone who might be interested.

  • It all started one sunny(ish) day in March 2015. That’s when we launched—zero clients, no income, and armed with only a personal loan.
  • To get things moving, Pip worked multiple jobs. One involved getting up at 2:30 a.m. four days a week and then coming home to work on Colour Me Social—par for the course, as we are sure many startups have experienced!
  • By the end of April, we were working with nine fantastic startup companies.
  • Long-term relationships and partnerships are essential to us. One of the magnificent nine we still are proudly working with today
  • We are one of the original homeworking pioneers. We don’t have offices—we never have. We learned years ago how to operate effectively across multiple locations. Remember Skype? It’s how we used to roll.
  • Our team is based mostly in the UK, but we also have wonderful colleagues in Denmark, France, and North Macedonia.
  • Although primarily UK-based; we also have clients in Germany and the US currently.
  • Our first client was in the Hair and Beauty industry, and our most recent is a SaaS company. Diverse we are.
  • We work with clients in B2B and B2C industries, from Fortune 500 leadership development providers to retail.
  • We don’t call ourselves an agency. We see ourselves more as a marketing communications collective. That’s not as pretentious as it sounds. It allows us to bring in the best talent from every marketing sphere without the barrier of working only with permanent agency-based employees.
  • Diversity and inclusion is a big deal for us. From our founder, Pip, to our wider team, we are proud of our colleagues and the people we work with, regardless of their backgrounds.
  • In fact, one of our ambitions is to create an academy to support and develop talented people from diverse and underrepresented communities who want to break into the marketing industry.
  • We have ups and downs like any business. We have almost not made it on a few occasions, but we’ve learned the power of pivoting and of networks and communities.
  • When it comes to marketing, we believe 100% in the need to engage all your stakeholders, not just potential prospects, on social media.
  • Our mission is to help businesses share their purpose, values, and voice, communicate and engage effectively with all their stakeholders, and showcase the human side of their organisation through engaging stories and content.

As we said, no sales pitch. Just 15 facts about little ol’ us.

Thanks for reading.

5 Ways To Build A Truly Purpose-Driven Company Culture

Does your company have a purpose? Do you live and breathe that purpose? Do your employees?

A purpose-driven company is clear about its direction to leaders, stakeholders and customers, but it takes a little more for that purpose to be truly imbued into its culture. When done right, every single team member has a heartfelt sense of ownership for the purpose, employees feel respected, and everyone in the company is working in the same direction.

It’s no secret that companies are facing the toughest labour market in decades. Competition for top talent is fierce, and the ‘great resignation’ is still a pressing concern for many. Pair this with the fact that countless studies have shown Millennials and Gen Z are more likely to join a business if it demonstrates ethics that align with their own (in fact, nearly half of Gen Z will work for a purpose-driven company for a 20% lower salary) and it’s evidently never been more important to instil your company’s purpose into your culture.

To attract and retain the most socially-conscious generation, purpose must sit at the heart of your company culture. Read on for our top five tips on embedding your purpose and attracting top talent.

  1. Do the work, and talk about it 

Imbuing a sense of purpose into your culture is one thing – ensuring your employees know about it, and bringing them along for the journey is just as important. 

Drive your mission and values home with your internal communications – tell your team about your success and community endeavours to show your purpose in action. Establishing a positive culture that centres purpose and highlights the valuable output of your company’s work is key to employee retention. 

  1. Don’t neglect inclusivity and belonging 

Inclusion is a major driver of employee buy-in, particularly for younger workers. 

A strong and genuine DEI effort helps employees connect to your organisation and helps establish a purpose-driven culture. 

Working hard to offer your employees the resources they need to thrive is win-win for your business. Purpose and belonging go hand in hand, and providing a safe and welcoming context for your employees is a huge step towards establishing a culture that centres purpose.

  1. A purpose-driven workplace starts at the top

You can’t expect your employees to live your purpose if senior team members aren’t leading the way. 

Transparency is the key here – the leadership must share knowledge about their goals, mission, and progress with employees, so team members can see exactly how their work contributes to them.

Understanding the bigger picture is crucial when establishing a purpose-driven culture. It allows individual contributors to see how their work fits into the end goal; it also makes for a more confident and able workforce.
Knowing why things happen the way they do is an incredible motivator. Rather than blindly following leadership with no sense of the reasoning behind decisions, employees with a ‘whole-picture’ view have more agency to drive their work towards the main business objectives.

  1. Bring everyone together

Purpose-driven workplaces start with socialisation and collaboration. 

Creating a sense of belonging is crucial for motivating employees to embrace your company’s purpose. Make them feel safe, respected and supported. Leaders can achieve this through feedback and praise and by asking employees to offer their perspectives. This gives you a unique insight into their purpose and what drives them.

Collaboration has become a different beast throughout the past few years as the pandemic changed ways of working forever. The uptick in hybrid and remote working makes this even more important – try to assemble your employees together frequently and provide social contexts for them to come together and share their passions and purpose with their colleagues. 

  1. Adopt a whole-person approach

Seeing employees as a collective undistinguished mass of workers is the antithesis of a purpose-driven culture. Leaders must adopt a whole-person approach when it comes to their team. Your employees are dynamic, complex individuals, each with their own passions, strengths and needs – be sure to recognise this.

Motivate employees to follow what lights them up – getting them excited about your purpose will drive great productivity and improve employee happiness. 

The work to build a purpose-driven company culture begins today

We hope these tips help you foster a culture that will connect your employees to something above and beyond the fundamentals of their day-to-day roles and help them understand and embrace the higher purpose of your company.

From Side-Gig to Success: Exploring the ‘Why’ Behind Starting Your Own Business

Starting your own business can be an enticing prospect for many individuals. The allure of independence, the freedom to pursue personal passions, and the ever-elusive work-life balance are just a few reasons people choose this path. 

Interestingly, some of the most successful businesses today, like Etsy, Facebook, Apple, Under Armour, and Yankee Candle, have humble beginnings as mere side gigs. Those small projects were initially meant to generate extra income while working regular nine-to-five jobs. However, fate had other plans, and these side ventures evolved into thriving enterprises that have left a significant impact on the world.

When it comes to starting a business, various motivations come into play, and these motivations can vary from one entrepreneur to another. Let’s delve into some of the driving forces that inspire individuals to take the leap into the entrepreneurial journey.

1. Passion and Purpose

One of the biggest motivators for starting a business is the burning passion for a particular idea, product, or service. When you’re genuinely passionate about something, it ceases to feel like “work” and becomes an exciting endeavour. Entrepreneurs who identify a purposeful mission behind their business are often driven by a desire to make a positive impact on society, leaving behind a meaningful legacy.

2. Independence and Autonomy

Breaking free from the confines of a traditional job and being the master of your destiny is liberating. Entrepreneurship offers a level of independence and autonomy that is rare in most corporate settings. Making decisions without seeking approval from higher-ups allows entrepreneurs to shape their businesses according to their vision and values.

3. Financial Freedom

The prospect of unlimited earning potential is undoubtedly an attractive aspect of starting a business. While financial success is not guaranteed, the possibility of building a profitable enterprise that generates substantial income can be a significant motivating factor. Entrepreneurship offers the potential for long-term wealth and financial security, which may be challenging to achieve through traditional employment.

4. Flexibility and Work-Life Balance

Entrepreneurs often seek a better work-life balance by starting their own businesses. Although running a startup can be demanding, entrepreneurs have the flexibility to set their own schedules and allocate time for family, hobbies, and personal pursuits. Achieving a healthy work-life balance is a crucial factor in reducing stress and ensuring overall well-being.

5. Innovating and Problem-Solving

Entrepreneurs are often driven by a desire to create something new, disrupt industries, or solve significant challenges facing society. The thrill of innovation and problem-solving can be a powerful motivator, especially for those who relish the opportunity to think outside the box and create solutions that positively impact people’s lives.

6. Personal Growth and Learning

Starting a business is an incredible journey of personal growth and continuous learning. Entrepreneurship presents numerous challenges and opportunities to develop new skills, enhance existing ones, and expand one’s horizons. The process of building and running a business can be transformative, shaping entrepreneurs into more resilient, adaptable, and self-aware individuals.

In conclusion, the decision to start a business is deeply personal, influenced by a myriad of motivations that resonate with each entrepreneur’s unique aspirations and goals. 

What motivated you to embark on the entrepreneurial journey?

5 Minutes With Lucy Paine

Welcome to the third instalment in our series of blogs that look at all aspects of the challenges facing small businesses. For our third edition, we sat down with Lucy Paine from TechSpark who is leading their Tech Swindon ecosystem development project.

What was your background prior to Tech Swindon?

Very varied, I have worked for Pre IPO start-ups in Silicon Valley, within tech and education companies in sales, partner management and marketing, run my own business and most recently spent almost five years at Sussex Innovation Centre putting all my knowledge, experience and connections into helping other people grow their companies, or take their idea into reality.

Most of my roles have been around people and collaboration looking back but I can’t claim that there was a plan.

How do you help support small businesses in your role?

Tech Swindon is a new initiative focussed upon glueing together all the great tech scene in Swindon to then nurture and develop into a community able to challenge for talent against the shiny lights of cities like Bristol and Brighton.

The support we offer ranges from creating a peer-driven Swindon Founders meet up through to one to one strategy workshops – I’m a resource for the SME tech community and what that looks like is flexible as we evolve the proposition and meet more companies.

What inspires you about working with small businesses?

Helping them progress, as a neutral resource I offer can a sounding board, challenge strategy, help them test assumptions, build a team – we are a not for profit and I am not trying to upsell services. The success of Tech Swindon will be reflected by the growth of our small business community, and I hope some of that will come from the confidence and intelligence of the support delivered.

In your opinion how important is growing your small business network, building relationships and nurturing connections to help grow a business compared to other sales/marketing activities?

There are two angles to this question – firstly running a business can be really hard, lonely and having a network of fellow founders means you can share your issues/ highs and lows with a group of peers who understand and can help.

Secondly, the old cliché of people buying people is still true even in 2020 – and through networking, you’ll meet clients, partners and connectors you’d never build any depth of credible relationship with on LinkedIn. Just be picky with your networking, but when you find a group that works commit, go each month and build meaningful engagement, don’t expect a sale, hope for an interesting conversation and it will be worth your time.

You can also use this networking to support your sales and marketing, get onto social, take a photo of the group, tag the organiser, attendees you met etc and add an intelligent comment that they will all share – again do this with integrity and they’ll start sharing your message.

What are the main challenges you see SMEs face in doing this?

Time v perceived value – I have seen some companies go to every networking event going for two months, then decide none are worth it so don’t leave the office for the rest of the year. Research a meeting, check out the attendee list and if no one there is remotely in your space don’t go – find your tribe but also throw in a random one with an interesting speaker.

I think a lot of people worry about how false networking can be, and the first time is always awkward, but the second time you’ll recognise the faces and the conversations will develop from weather to something more meaningful.

I am avoiding the word useful, just sounds too manipulative – if you only look for useful you’ll miss interesting and genuine connections are more to lead to a referral than useful ones. We’ve all met the person who starts with asking what do you do, and looks over your shoulder as soon as he/she has decided you’re not going to buy what he is selling – don’t be that person.

How do you see small business networking, building relationships and nurturing connections changing in the future? Will Tech play a bigger role?

Tech hasn’t mastered the complexities of an in-person networking connection, LinkedIn is great to keep in touch, and webinars for quick calls or training, but we get so much more done in person.

It’s just like dating, apps and matchmaking platforms all sound great, but you only know when you meet someone if it’s going to work. And while business is a different transaction the trust you build in those first meetings is why you buy/ sell/ recommend/ partner with someone.

What is the most powerful networking event you have been involved with?

Powerful networking to me is a group where I feel comfortable, with familiar faces and new ones, in a non-sales environment where the room wants to hear more about you without judgement and who are themselves well connected and able to help you make connections that impact your business – that’s the utopia of networking and very rare.

In Brighton that was the Brighton Chamber Breakfast and their success was underpinned by the team and the culture of the Chamber – there was the odd salesperson but they didn’t tend to come back, they’d missed the point!

Do you have any final words of advice for small business owners wanting to improve their network and their networking skills?

Make time for networking, research the groups around you and try a few. Prepare your 30 second “What does your business do” reply, make it natural and interesting – and then listen to all the replies you get.

LinkedIn with the people you enjoyed meeting, ignore the invitations of the ones you didn’t and commit to going to the group that has the most relevance for at least 6 months, offer to talk, offer to sponsor a lunch/ charity event and see this time as a business and personal investment.

Small business marketing ideas!

As a small business that is very interested in small business marketing, we spend a lot of time each week reading tips and advice from across the World Wide Web. So, we thought we’d launch a regular round-up of some of the cool ideas that we come across just in case you have missed them.

So to kick off, here’s a few for starters.

Use Google Data Studio to Analyse Your Facebook Ads

If you are spending money on Facebook Ads to increase reach, conversions etc you are going to want to fully understand your Facebook ad performance. One really good way of doing that is through Google Data Studio.

This article by Social Media Examiner covers how to better track and analyse your Facebook advertising campaigns performance with this free tool.

Get Creative!

Want to be the same as your competitors? Of course not. That would be silly.

From Speed dating with potential customers to Alignment with trade associations, this article by All Business has some brilliant approaches by 10 entrepreneurs that are not scared to look outside the box when it comes to marketing their business and products.

Video marketing is leading the way for ROI

Everyone’s talking about video marketing, and for good reason: there’s power in video, especially for small businesses. Video grabs users’ attention and engages them to a greater extent than text (apart from this blog of course).

We can’t think of a better form of media to engage your target audience than video. 83% of businesses say that video provides a good return on investment and ROI and research by Moovly found that you are 53 times more likely to show up on the first page of Google if you have a video embedded on your site. As Middle Table say; with numbers like that, what’s not to love!

Build your LinkedIn community in just 5 minutes a day

Are you maximising your presence on LinkedIn?

It’s possible to start building your personal network with just 5 minutes effort a day so no more “I don’t have the time” excuses!

South Thames Marketing show you how…

We hope you find some these useful and if you are looking for any tips/advice on how to better maximise social for your business drop us a line. As fellow small business owners, we are happy to chat and advise without obligation. We’re just pleased to help where we can.

 

Taking advantage of the benefits of Twitter for small business

Let’s be honest, Twitter is an interesting world! We follow our favourite celebrities or footballers and we’ve winced at some of the stuff they’ve shared. A scandal hits and one of the first places we turn to is Twitter! We’ve also all had that sneaky look when our phone signal goes down, just to see the comical responses that people post. Why do people get so angry? It can be an intimidating, as well an interesting place!

And in a professional sense, it can be a place where you might think, it’s best just to steer clear and concentrate your efforts on LinkedIn – especially within the B2B world.

Yet, Twitter is actually a very powerful marketing tool and an extremely effective and valuable one to build relationships with your clients (and prospective clients). We’ll be honest, we love it!

You can learn an incredible amount about your customers; you can engage with them; you can make your brand more human and importantly, you can add value by sharing relevant and engaging content. It’s also a great way to stay ahead of what’s happening in the industry and build awareness of your firm. What is there not to like? What’s more, it’s free.

However, the reason people don’t appreciate the value and power is that they do not appreciate the time and effort that is required. You get out of Twitter, what you put in!

So, here are some of our quick tips to help you find that value:

Understand what you want to achieve.

What are your goals? Is it…

  • Increasing sales?
  • Becoming a customer support channel?
  • Increasing brand awareness?
  • Tracking industry trends?

Maybe, it’s a combination of the four, but always be clear and remember you can’t be all things to everyone.

Have a clear content plan

Posting interesting and engaging content, such as blogs and white papers, is important to maintain the interest of your followers. Relevant content grows your following and increases your brand awareness. Complement your own content with relevant third-party content that will be of interest to your following. But, have a plan and remember you need to be tweeting around 3-4 times day. Mix your content up, use images, create GIFs, embed videos – make sure your newsfeed is engaging and looks your own.  But don’t forget while ‘quantity’ is important when it comes to tweeting, it cannot be at the expense of ‘quality’. If you over-post, you run the risk of coming across like an aggressive spam account.

Use Hashtags

Make sure you use relevant and popular hashtags in your tweets. Look at what hashtags are trending with your target audience. This play a big part in growing your following.

Engage, engage, engage

Twitter is not just a place for broadcasting announcements, you have to engage with your community. Retweet posts you find interesting. Add a comment or click Like. If someone comments on your posts, good or bad, reply – professionally! You’ll get positive results from Twitter when you genuinely engage with people, but this requires a time commitment. One simple tip: just take 5/10 minutes a day, maybe during your commute home, to scroll through your feeds and comment and retweet.

In most industries, Twitter is full of influencers; make sure you also follow, retweet, comment and like their posts. If you can build up a relationship with these individuals, there is a chance they will begin retweeting your content. The benefit? They have significant reach and exposure.

Measure and keep track

Twitter analytics enables you to analyse your activities:

  • You can track the performance of your tweets daily and monthly. From this, you can get an understanding of what kinds of content gets the best engagement and you can tailor your plan accordingly. It will also give you an indication of the most effective times to post.
  • You can also track how your following has increased/decreased over the last 30 days, and how many new followers you’ve received per day. You can, therefore, look at what kinds of content was posted on the days you lost followers, did you post too much that day?

Finally, don’t expect overnight results. It takes time to build a relevant and engaged community. So, stick with it and the success will follow – no pun intended!

Twitter is an ‘interesting’ world, but it’s also an extremely effective one. If you would like some support with your Twitter or wider social media strategies, we’d love to chat.

A version of this post originally appeared on our good friends at South Thames Marketing’s blog.