Lessons from Small is Beautiful

By Nicola Balkind

As I’ve mentioned before, I love working with Roanne Dods and the rest of the amazing team on Small is Beautiful – an annual conference for microbusinesses and freelancers. I consider myself a bit of both.

This year’s event took place on 17 & 18 June, here in Glasgow. I was live-tweeting the event – a process I really enjoy. There was so much to keep up with, and after a while it became a process of hearing great scraps of wisdom fly in through my ears and straight back out through my fingertips.

The event featured an amazing array of speakers whose talks were filled with brand new advice and valuable reminders.

Today I want to share some of the highlights of the speakers’ shared wisdom – and some things that really resonated with me and my own business.

Standing out often means putting people off

As James Greig put it: “If you want to be magnetic, you must be as willing to repel as to attract.”

There isn’t a big committee mentality among microbusinesses, but when striking out on your own it’s easy to cast too wide a net. The more you try to appeal to everyone, the more standard and boring you risk becoming.

Patricia van den Akker had another way of making the same point, saying simply: “More businesses should be a bit more like Marmite.”

Are you putting off the customers who aren’t right for you?

Your time is a precious resource

Leah Hutcheon gave a talk about the value of time. We talk about spending, wasting, running out of time, but as humans it’s our most precious resource.

She also debunked that quote about how Beyoncé has 24 hours in a day, too. Unlike the rest of us, she has help. She probably isn’t worried about getting the laundry done before tomorrow’s meeting. Remember that.

You can use your fear as motivation

On Day 2, we revisited Akiko Kobayashi’s Pecha Kucha talk, which she delivered at our event back in December. It’s entitled Do The Talk That Scares You. My subtitle would be Apply liberally when feeling afraid.

Her story is a stark reminder about the power fear can hold over you, and how you can choose to overcome it, one challenge at a time. And it’s just beautiful.

On reading & writing

Fi Scott gave a daring talk about her experience with starting a small tech company in Scotland called Make Works. She discussed everything from securing arts and innovation funding to the pit of despair. There were tons of gems in her talk, but the one that stuck out to me most was, “When I panic, I read.” I relate, but I’m just as frequently paralysed by panic.

I also took a lot of solace and inspiration from James Greig’s talk on writing. He told us that writing is like time-travel – an idea I’ve been juggling around in my head with unending amusement. He shared advice that I often give my collaborators, and hearing it back was just as powerful: “Blogging isn’t really about writing blog posts, it’s about telling stories.”

James also shared a great Elmore Leonard quote: “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” Simple, effective, and it made me return to my old habit of collecting and squirrelling away useful quotes for anytime I feel under-inspired.

Small matters

One of the biggest themes at Small is Beautiful is, unsurprisingly, the power of being small and staying small, but doing work that has a big impact.

This quote gave me great comfort:

“From little things, big things can grow.” – Lucy Simpson

The greater context in which we exist as microbusinesses in a macro business world was also explored. Ruth Little gave us a visual metaphor of the capitalistic obsession with growth resulting in cancers and Godzilla-sized hamsters. Then Katherine Trebek summarised on the final day with these thoughts:

“We’re overexposing our communities & our planet to the wrong sort of growth: obsessions with big, with status,and with self. [We need to] build from the bottom up, cherish the small in a world obsessed with big.”

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received about running your business?

You can find out more about Small is Beautiful at smallisb.com – and keep an eye out for recaps and videos of all the talks coming later this year.

Email Marketing Basics

By Nicola Balkind

Welcome to email marketing 101!

As you may know, although I’ve been providing email marketing services to my clients for over 5 years, I recently started practicing what I preach and began sending out a monthly email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

If you are serious about your marketing efforts, one of the best ways to get big results from short pieces of content is through email marketing.

Here are some of my key tips and email marketing basics.

Wait, why do I need an email list?

When it comes to social media and content marketing, email is by far and away the most direct and useful tools at your disposal.

Users don’t give away their details willy-nilly, so receiving their email address is a real gift.

Unlike social media, the majority of adults have email accounts, and the majority of those who have email, use email.

This means that the likelihood that your target customer will see your name in their inbox is much higher than the likelihood that they will see your tweet in their Twitter feed.

Another good reason to have an email list is to get around the limitations of using your personal email account to send multiple messages. Email marketing platforms exist for a reason.

Choose a platform

Email marketing platforms allow you to store lists, create email templates, and send out your communications to those contacts.

Some are free while others will charge a fee based on your subscriber count and/or the features you require.

My preferred platform is Mailchimp because it has a nice interface, it’s pretty user-friendly and, well, it’s the first thing I used back in 2010 and I haven’t seen any reason to change. Mailchimp is free up to your first 2,000 subscribers and you can also purchase credits for additional features.

I also use Mailchimp’s free sister, TinyLetter, to send out my weekly link list (click to sign up!) through my personal blog.

Some others you might try are AWeber and GetResponse.

Research the market and find the best platform for you.

Know the rules

There are rules and regulations governing the distribution of email marketing – and many are law.

Most email newsletter platforms/providers will keep a strict eye on how you are using your lists. This is partly to keep in with the law, and partly because each email marketing platform runs on reputation. (This means that if its users are sending out spam, email providers will lose trust in those platforms and their mail will not be delivered as reliably. If emails are not being delivered, that’s bad for business.)

The basics that you need to know are:

1. Any emails that you collect must give full permission to receive your correspondence.

2. A list that has been collected a long time ago, or which has not received emails for some time, is known as a ‘cold’ list. Cold listees will be less likely to open emails and are more likely to unsubscribe.

3. Most platforms will recommend using double opt-in, which means that after your new contact provides their information they will also receive a confirmation email to reconfirm their subscription.

The worst thing you can do when starting a new list is to add each and every one of your Gmail contacts. The open rate will be low, your unsubscribe rate will be very high, and the reputation of your list will rapidly decline.

With that in mind, how do you get started?

Create your list(s)

Within your account, you will be able to segment lists based on customer types, or create multiple lists for different offerings.

When you are starting out, you will probably only need one list. Create your list and give it a descriptive name so that your subscribers know what they are signing up for.

Once you’ve created the list, get the direct link where users can sign up and begin advertising this wherever you want your community members to see it and sign up.

But first…

Make your proposition clear

There are two propositions in particular that must be clear to your audience:

1. What the newsletter will be: what information to expect, and
2. How frequently you will be emailing them.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve signed up for a newsletter and made assumptions about how often I’d receive their messages. I’ve often then received a deluge of 4 or more emails in one week and promptly unsubscribed. This may work for some marketers, but in this case it was much more information than I needed.

A great way to encourage people to sign up is to create an incentive. Depending on your business this could be an informative ebook, a worksheet, or a free consulting call. Any kind of useful download. This incentive can also go a long way to giving your readers a flavour of what to expect from your coming missives.

Create your standard template(s)

Now that you have your list or lists set up, you’re ready to make a template.

Whether you go for an all-out fancy design or a simple column layout, be sure that you have a striking header image.

You’ll also want to send your sample template email to a few different email providers to ensure that it looks good across multiple platforms. (For example, like with different browsers, an email that renders perfectly on Gmail may struggle on Outlook.)

Your template will serve as your standard layout and should save you a lot of time and effort from email-to-email.

Market your list

Encouraging sign-ups is an ongoing process, so be sure to market your list at every opportunity.

Some ways you can do this are:

1. Provide opt-in links on your website – for example on the homepage, and/or in the sidebar.

2. Post reminders on your social media channels – don’t be afraid to repeat yourself for those who may have missed it, but equally try not to spam everyone!

3. Share the love – within the newsletter, remind your current readers that they can forward your newsletter on to a friend who might find your content useful.

Test & adjust

Like with all marketing efforts, you’ll learn which tactics get results along the way.

Your key analytics will be your open rate (what percentage of recipients opened the email), your click rate (how many people clicked and on which links), and any other sales factors relating to these.

Experiment with your subject lines, try different marketing styles to grow your list, and check your results against the industry average.

And remember…

Along the way, trust your instincts and do some passive research.

What would you want to see and not want to see in your inbox?

What can you learn from the emails that you receive and do click through on?

How can you keep things interesting for your subscribers?

Your Turn

Have you started email marketing yet? If so, how’s it working out for you? If not, what’s stopping you? Drop me a comment below or get in touch and find out if I can help.

My Top File Sharing & Collaboration Tools

By Nicola Balkind

How about some recommendations?

Today I’m sharing some of my favourite tools for file sharing and collaboration that I use on freelance projects with clients and to manage my own business.

Project Management

Being my own personal assistant is one thing, but managing a business and several projects at once is quite another.

That’s why I’m constantly developing my use of project management tools to find the best fit for me.

My top tip? It’s all about customising the tools you use to your personal need. Here’s how I do that.

Basecamp

Basecamp is a hugely popular project management tool, up there with the likes of Asana and Evernote (which I use for a slightly different purpose – as you’ll see below).

The platform is primarily used by teams to co-ordinate their efforts, and its main features include to-do lists, an events calendar, and text document sharing.

I do use Basecamp for some shared projects, but for the most part I use Basecamp Personal to track my business activity.

Basecamp Personal | @robotnic

Basecamp is where I begin a new text document each week with my goals for the week and an overview of tasks to be completed, day by day. This acts as an archive, is an easy place to move tasks around and refer to what needs done when, and it’s easier to edit and move things around on than paper and ink.

Basecamp Personal to-dos | @robotnic

Basecamp is also the home of my tickable to-do lists, a satisfying little option that doesn’t require an extra to-do list app. These also allow you to set who’s responsible and a deadline date. One day before the deadline, you get an email reminder.

Now that Basecamp is a stand-alone company, they’re also upping their app game. The latest iterations of the iPhone and iPad app allow you to add and check off to-dos and view those files. It’s also handy for leaving yourself some comments for later.

Toggl

For time-tracking on my freelance projects, lately I’ve been using Toggl.

After months of trying to master the Pomodoro technique, I found that I work best with time to warm up and that after 25 minutes were over I was just hitting my stride.

Toggl

Toggl counts up, rather than down, and allows you to track your time based on which project and task you’re in the process of completing. You hit start and the timer goes, stop and it stops. Then you get a lovely wee digest at the end of the week which details how much time you spent on each task.

It keeps me on track, stops me from over- or under-servicing clients, and helps me to understand just how long particular tasks take, rather than going by a hunch.

Also, once that timer starts clicking away I don’t want it to show what a time-waster I really am.

Note-taking

I use pen and paper a lot… but I also want quick access between my phone and computer.

Here’s how I keep everything in one digital place.

Apple Notes

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! I use Apple products across the board, so the Notes app is really useful for jotting down thoughts and ideas.

All you have to do is log into your iCloud account and each of your devices will sync up – so if I’m on my iPad and book a cinema ticket, I can paste the detail into Notes and pick it up on my phone once at the cinema.

It’s a really quick to sync and simple to use – definitely my go-to for brief notes.

Evernote

evernote

Evernote is one of the internet’s most popular note-taking apps, and it’s hugely customisable depending on how you like to use it.

My use of Notes could theoretically transfer to Evernote, but I find that fiddling between notebooks within the Evernote app, and the size of the app itself, can take just a bit too long to be efficient.

Personally, I use Evernote (Premium) to take longer, more detailed notes or work on documents on the go. I have notebooks set up for various research projects where I brain-dump or save links to articles and the odd to-do list.

My main use of Evernote, though, is as a repository for Reading Week – a feature on my personal blog. I set up a recipe on IFTTT (If This Then That) so that whenever I favourite an article in my Pocket queue (more on Pocket here), it automatically syncs the link to my Reading Week notebook. It makes the blog writing process much easier and quicker and gives me fast access to the links I want to use.

Do you have a creative use of Evernote? Tweet me your suggestions!

File Sharing

As a remote worker, file sharing is a big part of my work with clients.

My choices here are the obvious ones – but in case you’ve a choice to make, I’ll let you know why they work for me.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud-based storage option which allows you to create folders and sync files to the cloud.

The desktop app sits in your computer like a regular folder, and keeps updated with the latest versions of files that have been shared with you. It’s an excellent option for anyone who switches between computers or often has to access documents from outside the office.

I like to share a Dropbox folder with my clients in which we store any shared files (duh!) and reference materials. For example, strategy documents and content planners are often shared by email, but I also get them uploaded into a shared Dropbox folder for easy access from anyone in the team. It cuts down on that horrid inbox search for that file you can’t remember the name of.

Google Docs – using RocketDocs

No news here: Google Docs / Google Drive is the biggest file-sharing collaboration tool around.

However, if you’re anything like me and weren’t prepared for the one-account-does-all approach that Google decided to take, you’ll know my problem with the service.

The thing is, my default login runs my Google+, YouTube, and formerly my blog accounts. This means I have to switch between accounts, which is fine for email but a nightmare for using services like Google Drive.

Fortunately, there’s a Mac solution for this problem: an app called RocketDocs. It costs next-to-nothing (usually around £7, currently £2.29), it runs on your desktop, and it operates as a separate application so you won’t get lost in your open tabs. *prayer emoji*.

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What are your favourite collaboration tools? Tweet me @robotnic or shoot me an email with your thoughts and recommendations.

Lessons from Small is Beautiful

Standing out often means putting people off

Your time is a precious resource

You can use your fear as motivation

On reading & writing

Small matters

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