A Shopper's Guide To Sustainable Products
A Shopper's Guide To Sustainable Products
So, you want to do what you can for the environment and be more sustainable in your every-day life? Welcome to the club—sustainability and eco-friendliness are hot topics right now.
And consumer habits are witnessing changes in light of this rise in awareness. According to a recent survey, consumers are willing to pay more for clothes considered sustainable and more eco-friendly, a trend which isn’t limited to fashion.
But for consumers wanting to make the right choices and ‘do their bit’, the path isn’t exactly clear. With environmental terminology and jargon coming out of our ears, as well as fact and fiction about the sustainability of items blurred, shoppers need a clear guide to what the options are—importantly—what it all means.
In this blog post, product marketing specialists, Zagwear, provide a shopper’s guide to sustainable products.
What is a Sustainable Product?
The definition of sustainable is ‘the quality of causing little or no damage to the environment and therefore able to continue for a long time’.
But in reality, the impact that a product has on the environment—from its manufacture to eventual disposal—is only part of the story. Products that claim to be sustainable should also consider their social and economic impact.
The three sides to sustainability:
Environmental - impact of a product—from manufacture to disposal—on the environment, such as its carbon footprint.
Social - impact of a product on society, such as trading ethically.
Economic - profitability of a product for the business that brings it to market.
With the growing concern over the future of our planet and turmoil seen across the world which are widely considered the result of Man’s activities, environmental is a key focus for those looking to be more sustainable.
As well as environmental impact, social sustainability is also a focal point, with ensuring workers are paid fairly and kept safe a priority for the 21st century consumer.
Shopping for Sustainable Products
But even with a clear idea of what sustainability is, knowing if a product falls into this category can still be challenging. What should consumers look out for when trying to shop sustainably?
Don’t Get ‘Greenwashed’
Brainwashing consumers into thinking a product is sustainable or eco-friendly, green washing are products which are packaged in a way to make them look like they’re good for the environment, even though they’re not.
Often sporting natural colours and minimalistic design on their packaging, these items are false pretenses. The companies guilty of green washing are often spending more time and money on marketing themselves as environmentally friendly than they are on minimising their global impact.
Delve Deeper Into Brands
If green washing shows one thing, it’s that the word of a brand can’t always be trusted. If you want to shop for sustainably, you need to do the groundwork to find the brands who really are out to do good.
If a brand has taken action to be more sustainable, the chances are that they’ll want to publicise that.
From information on a brands website and social media to employee spokespeople in brick-and-mortar stores, a simple search or question should be able to give you all the information you need to establish if a products sustainability is legitimate.
The environmental impacts of products can be a bit of a minefield. This post has hopefully clarified sustainability, but there’s much more to shopping responsibly.
If you want to know more about this topic, take a look at our in-depth Eco Glossary.
This article was contributed by Daniel Hill, a creatively-driven, product marketing specialist currently responsible for heading up Zagwear’s EMEA & APAC regions. His years of experience in branding, brand activation and promotional merchandise has seen him assist some of the world’s best-known brands with incorporating product-based marketing in their campaigns.
Digital Marketing Tips For 2021
What we consider as 'marketing' is rapidly evolving and becoming a lot broader. To get the most out of our digital marketing in 2020, we need to understand that It is no longer just about your branding and advertising, teams from multiple departments need to focus on building great customer experiences and engaging customers to form long-term relationships. As the year is drawing to an end, we take a look at the key digital marketing trends to look out for in 2020.
Shopping through Social Media
Shopping through platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest has just become a whole lot easier. A whopping 72% of Instagram users have purchased a product through the app, proving that creating shoppable posts can have a huge impact on your business. A survey of 4,000 Pinterest users found that 70% use the app to find new an exciting products. Using your social media channels as an online shop will attract new customers quickly and easily and shorten the sales funnel making it easier for consumers to purchase from your business.
Go Live!
Customers respond well to visual content. Putting yourself and your business out there by making video content is an important marketing tool for not only 2019, but also 2020 and beyond. Be brave and go live! On average, Facebook and Instagram Live keep your audience watching three times longer than pre-recorded videos. Producing a live video will see you gain six times as many interactions as traditional videos, and the average watch time of Facebook Live videos has quadrupled in the past year.
Interactive Content
Today's shoppers are on the look out for new experiences online as well as offline. Interactive content is different and exciting which results in consumers spending more time on your website or social media channels. As interactive content is immensely shareable, when viewers share your posts it will help you gain a wider following and grow your online presence.
Get Crafty
Producing content that is visual and in-particular, colourful, will increase viewers desire to carry on reading by 80%. Our brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than text alone, and you don't need to be a graphic designer to begin creating posts with your logos and brand colours. Utilise free tools such as Canva to create colourful and engaging content and begin producing content that has a strong visual presence and watch your interactions increase by up to 180%!
Transport To the Future
Companies like IKEA have already begun reaping the benefits of AR by creating a platform which allowed customers to see if the furniture they want to buy will fit in their homes before they made a purchase.
A number of companies are also using AI powered technology to add chat-bots with automated answers to help aid customers through their website and keep them engaged throughout their time on the website.
AI and predictive analytics is also enabling hyper-personalisation of customer experiences and helping brands to learn more about their audience and customers.
In a digital world which is forever changing and adapting, there's an array of things that you can do to create engaging and exciting content in 2020. These pointers only just scratch the surface of the endless creative possibilities which can see your business gain more engagement on your social media posts and see more traffic to your website, leading to further sales and inquiries.
The Value Of Local SEO
The Value Of Local SEO
Your local high street really is changing. Online retailers have been mercilessly muscling in on local business traffic, reducing footfall and it’s become increasingly difficult for local businesses to get the customers they need; through their doors.
As a result, online real estate has become incredibly high value territory and local businesses have begun moving their attention to the top 10 positions on a Google local results page. Owning your space and competing on Google is imperative to get you in front of your local customers and keep you prepared for an ever-evolving, digitally-focussed future.
So What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO or Local Search Engine Optimisation, is the most effective approach to enable you to market your local business online, with the goal being, to rank as highly as possible for search terms relating to your business/product and ultimately increase sales and leads.
Keywords that shout ‘local’:
Digital marketing near me
Digital marketing agency brighton
Digital marketing brighton
Local digital agency
There are a number of different factors that influence Local SEO including: geographical location, Google My Business page optimisation, review signals, local links, keyword rich content etc.
However, it’s important to remember that Search Engine Optimisation of any kind is not something you perform once and then ‘forget about’. You must be continuously aware of the search environment, how your customers are using keywords and search queries differently and also keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing.
What’s The Financial Value of Local SEO?
Let’s understand the financial value of ranking highly for a keyword. Let’s imagine the keyword ‘digital marketing agency’ costs £3 per click for Paid Advertising placement and that keyword gets 200 searches per month.
As the number #1 Organic spot in Google receives approx 30% of that traffic, the clicks you would get in the first organic position would equate to around £180 if they had been generated from advertising.
In addition, if you were ranking for 4/5 other top keywords, that would cost close to £900 a month to cement if it had been generated from advertising.
We should also consider that with paid ads, sometimes users ignore them completely and go to the first organic results - another example of how valuable the top organic rankings can be.
So once you’re ranking well for keywords organically through Local SEO, you’re theoretically getting clicks for free!
Are My Customers Actually Searching Online?
95% of smartphone users have used their mobile to perform local searches. This can be anything from a cafe to Architectural services, local charities, recycling centres and beyond. If you don’t have an online presence, haven’t optimised your website or Google My Business page then it’s inevitable that you’re missing out on a huge amount of potential customers. What’s worse, is your competitors are the ones benefiting from your lack of local signals!
Will Local SEO Help My Website Get Found?
If you follow the right steps, stay consistent and ensure you put the time and effort doing it right, then the simple answer is, yes.
We have worked with a huge number of local businesses in Sussex and other parts of the UK who have followed our formula and seen their local rankings improve drastically.
We’re so confident in our process that if after 6 months you haven’t increased your leads, then we’ll work for free until we do.
Brighton Sustainable Fashion and Local Choices
Brighton Sustainable Fashion and Local Choices
The price of staying fashionable is more than just what’s on the price tag.
The fashion industry is considered to be the second most polluting industry in the world. This not only puts a huge amount of pressure on our planet but also the garment workers that are creating our clothes. The textile industry relies mostly on non-renewable resources – an estimated 98 million tonnes a year- including oil to produce synthetic fibres, fertilisers to grow cotton and harmful chemicals to produce, dye and finish fibres and textiles. If the fashion industry carries on using these resources the way they are currently, by 2050 the fashion industry could use more than 26% of the carbon budget associated with the 2°C global warming limit.
In 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh collapsed killing 1,138 people and injuring 2,500. The Rana Plaza building had five different factories inside, all manufacturing garments for large global fashion brands. The majority of people who make clothes for the big fashion brands you see on the high-street live in poverty and are unable to buy basic necessities for themselves or their families. 80% of these workers are women, who are subject to exploitation, verbal and physical abuse and extremely poor working conditions with very little pay.
What sustainable fashion choices can I make?
The first thing we can do is to shop second hand. Charity shops, car boot sales, vintage stores… there are so many places we can go to find fashion. There are some real gems out there ready to be re-loved! If you find something in a charity shop, not only will you be helping the planet you’ll also be helping the charity you’ve chosen to shop at.
For September, Oxfam have been running a campaign called #SecondHandSeptember. Pledge not to buy anything ‘new’ for 30 days, send in your finds on social media and join in with the movement!
Here are some local Brighton sustainable fashion choices to get you started on your second-hand journey…
· Cancer Research UK (Western Road) – they have a great vintage section too!
· Martlets Hospice Charity Shop
Another way to help is to re-look at your current wardrobe. Do you really need to buy something new? Many of us have items of clothing in our wardrobes that still have the tags in. Consider why this is… if you know you’ll never wear it - sell it! There are many platforms out there now where you can sell your clothes, so why not make some money whilst having a clear out?
Here are a few places we recommend for selling your clothes. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure after all!
· Depop
· Ebay
· Vinted
· Facebook Marketplace
· Or ask your friends – maybe they’ve had their eye on something of yours!
If there are clothes in your wardrobe that don’t fit anymore, or you haven’t worn them in a while donate them to a charity of your choice. There will be someone out there who will be thankful for your old pair of jeans or jacket! If you have something that looks a little worse for wear, consider a second use for it. Could it be cut up and used as a cleaning cloth? Could someone use it for arts and crafts? There are so many possibilities – and if you’re still stuck of what to do with your old worn and torn clothes recycle them in a textile recycling bank! Find textile recycling points local to Brighton & Hove here.
Local Brighton sustainable fashion choices
If you do need to buy something new consider buying from brands that are not only doing great things for the environment but also supporting the people that are creating their garments. Here are a few brands local to Brighton and Hove who are doing fantastic things…
· Zola Amour – they create everyday essential clothing out of high-quality organic fibres. Each garment will decompose naturally and not harm the earth in the process! All the garments are made in Warwickshire and each employee is paid the Living Wage as a minimum. They currently have a pop-up shop in Dukes Lane, Brighton!
· The Emperor’s Old Clothes – working exclusively with vintage and end-of-roll fabric The Emperor’s Old Clothes create one of a kind garments that are almost never re-produced. Everything is made in Brighton and every member of their team is paid the Living Wage. All scraps are kept and made into accessories and garments can be altered to make sure they fit perfectly and can be worn time and time again.
· Unoa - they source ethical and certified sustainable organic cotton and create soft and versatile leisure and active wear. Aamena, the creator of Unoa works closely with a factory in Pakistan where women are encouraged to take on fairly paid leadership roles supported by the United Nations Development Programme.
Hopefully we have inspired you to make some small but impactful changes to the way you think about fashion and what alternatives there are out there for you to do ‘your bit’! Brighton is full of various eco-friendly and sustainable brands and with a multitude of vintage shops around – it’s one of the best places to help you make more conscious decisions when shopping for clothes.
Do you feel strongly about having a positive impact in your community or environment around you? There are so many ways you can get involved with great projects in your area. Check out how you can become A Bloomer.
How Millennials Are Demanding Social Responsibility Within The Workplace
How Millennials Are Demanding Social Responsibility Within The Workplace
Millennials are a growing presence within the workplace; by 2020, millennials, the generation born between 1980 and 2000, will comprise more than 50 per cent of the UK workforce.
How is the wave of millennials pushing corporate social responsibility into action?
Millennials in the workplace are stereotyped as many (mostly negative things); fickle, unmotivated, greedy, entitled, ''technology-obsessed'', you name it, millennials have been accused of it.
But what actually motivates millennials in the workplace? Extensive research suggests that millennials are not only driven by social change, but they expect and demand businesses to meet their high expectations of acknowledging their corporate social responsibility.
According to a PwC report; corporate social values become more important to millennials when their basic requirements, like adequate pay and working conditions, are reached. The report states that "millennials want their work to have a purpose, to contribute something to the world."
Similarly, a study conducted by Cone Communications highlighted that three-quarters of millennials consider a company's social and environmental commitments when deciding where to apply for work. This suggests that millennials want to feel they are contributing positively to broader society and want to feel like they can support the social good their company does.
The drive to work within an ethical and socially driven workplace shouldn't be surprising. The younger generation has access to the news instantly and continuously. Meaning their awareness and understanding of today's social injustices has equipped them to push brands to put meaning behind the company's advertising.
Nowadays "people are so aware of the concept of greenwashing...so if you are saying you are sustainable or having certain values, then failing to abide by them, people will know you are not being authentic" - Katie Leggett from Innocent.
Millennials are stereotypically known for being fickle with their job and ''job-hopping'' whenever it suits them. However, research suggests that a business' commitment to a responsible business model can be a significant factor in whether young people agree to stay or leave. For example, nearly 70 per cent of millennials said that if a company had a strong sustainability plan, it would influence their decision to stay long term. Additionally, 75 per cent of millennials would even take a pay cut if that meant they could work for a socially responsible company!
What workforce diversity means for millennials
Diversity is another crucial aspect of millennials demand from the workplace. For them, diversity includes everything from race, gender, sexual orientation and different thoughts and perspectives. They want an open and transparent work culture where inclusivity and diversity are at its heart. They are less likely to accept the traditional approaches to the workplace and demand that discrimination is tackled head-on. Results from a Deloitte survey revealed that 83 per cent of millennials feel empowered and engaged when they see that their company fosters an authentically inclusive and diverse culture.
Millennials push companies to be the best they can and in some cases can force them to change their ideology for the better. Companies must accept that 87 per cent of millennials would be more loyal to a company that helps them stand up for social and environmental issues. You can already see a change in corporate attitudes to social responsibility, in 2016, over 9,000 companies around the world have signed the UN Global Compact, a promise to uphold social responsibility in human rights, labour standards, and environmental protection.
Millennials are more connected and more conscious of the environmental and social challenges which are happening today. Millennials understand the importance of using their voices and actions to try and make a change and contribute to broader social campaigns. Consequently, they want their work life to reflect their demand for change and know that in order to make a significant difference, companies need to listen to them and follow their lead.
Do you feel strongly about having a positive impact in your community or environment around you? There are so many ways you can get involved with great projects in your area. Check out how you can become A Bloomer.
Business Support Organisations in Brighton & East Sussex
Do you need some help to make your business boom? We’ve put together a handy list of business support organisations and co-working spaces in Brighton & East Sussex, that can lift your business to the next level.
Business Support Organisations in Brighton & Sussex:
Green Growth Platform
The Green Growth Platform is the South East Regional Hub of Clean Growth UK; a national business-innovation network that has supported thousands of green businesses across the UK to innovate and grow.
Brighton University’s Green Growth Platform is an award-winning green network, which aims to help create healthy, future-proof businesses that try their best to minimise their impact on the planet. They work to encourage businesses to develop clean and environmentally friendly products and services through coaching, workshops, access to funding and access to University facilities to help green businesses scale.
Brighton Chamber of Commerce
Brighton Chamber is a diverse community, which helps its members build successful businesses and be part of Brightons welcoming community and healthy economy. Anyone running or working for a business, charity or social enterprise; in or around Brighton and Hove, can register to be a member and access all of their services.
Their services include; networking events, Bite-sized learning sessions, business support and mentoring as well as an inclusion in their online business directory.
Wired Sussex
Wired Sussex is a Brighton- based membership organisation for companies and freelancers operating in the digital, media and technology sector in Sussex, UK. They assist their members to create, innovate and grow.
They have a Directory of Members and Projects Board, which allows their members to promote their services and find new clients. They also provide business and funding support through newsletters, 1-2-1 engagement and regular events.
Natwest Accelerator
Natwest offer’s 3 variations of their Accelerator programme, all which have been tailored to empower entrepreneurs from local startups to national businesses. The 6-month programmes are fully funded, and you don’t even have to be a NatWest customer to apply! They have 12 hubs throughout the UK which you'll have access to, including hubs in Scotland and Northern Ireland and one based here in Brighton.
The Pre-Accelerator programme is tailored to early stage start-up entrepreneurs, while the Accelerator programme is targeted at established entrepreneurs. Both of these offer exciting opportunities and support such as online learning and coaching, regular action-focused events and basic legal and tech advice.
Natwest also offer the accelerator programme ‘Fintech’ which delivers specialist support such as 1:1 coaching with their experienced staff and a technology review and sales strategy analysis by Dell Technologies
Sussex Innovation Centre
The Sussex Innovation Centre is a business incubation network, supporting entrepreneurs, start-ups and scale-ups across the South East from their headquarters at the University of Sussex. They offer founders strategic insight to help grow their business, while also providing practical resources which can help businesses grow at a healthy rate.
There are a large range of membership options, where you can tailor your membership to fit your needs. There are superb facilities and resources at the modern office spaces that they offer, or their Network membership is designed to give you all the benefits of their support and mentoring when you already have your own office, or don't need a permanent base.
Co-working Spaces in Brighton:
There are also a range of local co-working spaces in Brighton and East Sussex who offer networking and training events alongside office spaces to their members.
The Projects
The Projects is located in a 19th Century listed building in the heart of Brighton’s Lanes, it’s a great communal space that still manages to place the wide range of co-working needs at its heart. They offer a variety of co-working and serviced office space options to suit your needs, with entire floors dedicated to quiet spaces or spaces where you can collaborate with other members.
From half day passes to 24/7 access, all their co-working memberships are monthly rolling, so if you change your mind, you have the freedom to change your membership.
They also host daily events; such as free coffee mornings and yoga sessions, networking opportunities and free Help Hubs. So whether your company is newly established or long standing, big or small, you can find something here to suit you.
PLATF9RM
PLATF9RM is a thriving business community in Brighton & Hove, who offer access through single day passes, whole offices bookings, meeting rooms and event spaces.
They design their workspaces to encourage networking opportunities and business connections, whether you’re a freelancer or CEO of a multinational company.
They also curate a program of social and cultural events that ensure their members get to know each other, such as their monthly breakfast and quick-fire talks from PLATF9RM members and PLATF9RM physical; an opportunity to stretch your legs and connect with your fellow co-workers.
Want even more information on how you can kickstart your business and improve your online & offline traffic? Come along to our next SEO workshop.
How To SEO For International Markets
How To SEO For International Markets
Take care of the simple but important challenges before launching:
The most important challenge for international SEO is that you need to strategically adapt your brand for different cultures, all who have their own unique complexities.
Make sure to conduct market research in order to understand your international customers needs and desires. You can do this through keyword research and using social media like Twitter or Reddit to grasp a better understanding of what these customer’s problems are and what questions they are asking.
Research your local competitors, research what strategies your competitors have been using and analyse the gaps between you. Use these gaps to boost your growth into the international market.
Study the infrastructure of your targeted countries, although Google seems like the go-to norm, the preferred search engine may be different in your target countries. So don’t waste time on Google ads if your new customers aren’t going to see them! For example, in China, the most popular search engine is Baidu.
Should I target a language or a country with my website?
There are pros and cons to each option:
Targeting a language: this allows you to target people who live in different countries but speak the same language, additionally you don’t need to optimise it for any specific culture. However, you need to be aware that you’ll be using a ‘broad brush’ approach for a language where some countries may use different keywords/language when searching for services.
Targeting a country: alternatively, you can build your brand presence from scratch; not only translating your content but optimising it for that specific culture and customer preferences.
Which website structure should you choose for your domain?
This question follows on from the previous. Choosing your domain depends on whether you are targeting a language or a country.
If you are targeting a language, you don’t necessarily need to launch a completely new website, but rather you choose a subdomain or subdirectory which will host the translation of your original website. This requires less work to set up and less money to host.
On the flip-side, if you are targeting a country you may have to launch a country code top-level domain in order to gain higher authority in search engines and higher trust in potential customers. However, you will need to build your website popularity and authority from scratch.
How should business localise content on new site?
The main challenge of localising content is that simply translating a few of your pages into the target language won’t cut it. You need a well rounded and extensive understanding of your potential clientele in order to make your content effective.
Identify your keywords in a new language: unfortunately, translating your keywords word by word isn’t an efficient or viable use of your time. Additionally, some words have different meanings in different languages and can rely heavily on context, while local dialect can also play an important role in translating, as your customers may be using completely different terms.
So how can you conduct keyword research?
Investigate your competitors: research your competitors in the local market, investigate what keywords they are using and compare them to yours in order to find common phrases.
Hire help from a professional: hire someone who speaks the target language to look over your keywords, they can help you determine if you are using the right keywords for the language and customers you want to target.
Adapt your content to the new target market: your website is going to be your customers first point of call when they research your services/products and weigh up if they want to purchase from you. Therefore, it is extremely important that your website copy is up to a high standard. It’s not enough to simply translate, you need to optimise and adapt your copy to your target market.
These key elements of your website also require localisation:
URLs
Title tags
Meta descriptions
Image titles and alt texts
Phone numbers
Addresses
Time
Currency
How can you avoid duplicate content issues?
Google may identify any new version of your website as a duplicate of the original. You can prevent this by using hreflang tags- this tag informs Google that some of your website’s pages have the same content, but they are aimed for different customers and therefore unique.
What is the best international link-building strategy?
In order to build visibility and local authority, you need to ensure you have local links to your website. You can achieve this through:
Writing for the local media. This will allow you to gain exposure by offering advice and sharing your expertise. You could even start doing this before launching your international site. But remember; when writing for foreign websites, ensure you hire a local writer to make sure that your copy meets the standards.
Find and use broken link building. Find broken links and ask permission from the websites’ owners to redirect them to your content, (if it is suitable for the website of course).
What off-site activities can impact your online visibility?
On-site SEO is a vital process of building your brand’s local visibility but there are other techniques to take into consideration as well.
Guest posting: posting on local websites is a relatively inexpensive way to raise brand awareness.
Social media marketing: make sure aside some time to invest in creating social media profiles on the networks that are popular in your targeted countries.
Attend local events: this is one of the best ways to connect with relevant influencers in person, you can introduce your brand and start building a relationship with them straight away.
How does a global brand’s social media presence impact its search results?
The impact of social media on search engines continues to be debated. Google clearly states that social media presence has no impact on how it ranks pages. However, we know that social media presence can affect rankings in certain areas.
Brand awareness: A strong social media presence will help increase the awareness around your brand or product.
Links: Amplifying your content on social media can result in more links and citations back to your website. Which will in turn build your popularity and local authority.
Faster indexing: Social media shares can significantly increase the speed at which your new content gets indexed.
Improved topics targeting: Engaging with your new pool of customers on social media may inform how and what content you create for them.
What are the best tools for optimising international SEO?
Whatever aspect of international SEO you are focusing on, we have put together a handy list of some tools to help you optimise your website and content.
For understanding your new audience:
Google’s Consumer Barometer: can help you understand how people use the Internet in your target countries.
Connected Life: publishes an annual report which you can use to gain insight into your potential customers’ behavior in a number of locations, e.g. Brazil, China, Germany, Singapore and South Africa.
For general analysis:
Google Search Console – can identify your current search status in your new target location. With the Search Console you can monitor international queries, impressions, and CTRs.
Yandex Metrica, Baidu Index or another equivalent of Google’s Search Console – use it for a specific search engine you’re targeting.
For international keyword ideas:
Still have questions? Get in touch with the Creative Bloom team.
7 Amazing Sustainability Projects in Brighton You Never Knew About
7 Amazing Sustainability Projects in Brighton You Never Knew About
Brighton. The most hipster city in the world. We’re also pretty environmentally conscious. Following the success of the Climate Strike march in February 2019, slowly but surely ideas are changing about how to keep our planet healthy and happy. Here’s a list of seven eco-projects going on in our town you probably had no idea were happening...
1. Hubbub Foundation | City Centre
Hubbub have teamed up with the B&H council for their project #streetsahead, hitting our seaside city in full force. After finding out 80% of plastic found in oceans comes from land, they took a creative approach to educate citizens about appropriate disposal of litter. Through bold bright colours and catchy tagline’s like “For fishes sake — Don’t drop litter!”, this project has littered the streets of Brighton with positive environmental messages that stick in your head! They also carried out an enlightening social experiment, testing if passers-by would pick up dropped litter and produced a short video which can be viewed here — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcTJsX2lRug — Just goes to show educating others doesn’t have to be boring, and a little creativity goes a long way!
2. The Brighton Waste House | 58-67 Grand Parade
This award-winning project started out in 2012 involving over 700 students, builders, carpenters and ecologists. Now completed, this ‘living laboratory’ for ecological design is Europe’s first permanent public building made up of over 85% discarded materials. It is also an EPC ‘A’ rated low energy building and is a model used for investigating strategies for constructing contemporary and low-energy permanent structures in the future. Situated on Grand Parade, it's a monument that's worth the visit and exemplifies Brighton’s eco-friendly ethos!
3. Fareshare Sussex | 7 Westergate Road
Next on our earth-happy hot-spot list is Fareshare, a charitable project run by city gate community projects. Their work has two main objectives; tackling food poverty and tackling food waste — two aims that encapsulate the phrase ‘two birds one stone’. Fareshare receives surplus food from food companies that would otherwise go to waste, delivers it to local charities in refrigerated vans by a team of dedicated volunteers, and transforms it into thousands of meals or food parcels every week. In the last year, they’ve worked with the food industry to redistribute 468 tonnes of food, which has contributed towards more than 1 million meals and helped to reduce CO2 emissions by 223 tonnes. Simple and ethical ideas like this are an amazing way to help the hungry and save the planet from excess waste!
Additionally Fareshare Sussex work supporting people into employment, and they
re-distributed 564 tonnes to 122 charities last financial year!
4. Freegle | Online
Freegle, Brighton’s very own freecycling platform, is an online community that encourages the three R’s — reduce, reuse, recycle — by giving away unwanted items for free! They say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and this is certainly endorsed by Freegle, whose main aims are to reduce demand for the new, and appreciate the used for all it has left to offer. Thinking about that old microwave sitting in your garage? Get online to Freegle to give it another chance at life!
5. Earthship | Stanmer Park
Earthship Brighton was the first ever self-sustainable building to be built in the UK. This off-grid building project started in 2002, and now boasts the capacity to heat, cool, power itself through solar energy, collect its own rainwater and treat waste using plants instead of chemicals. Earthship Brighton is not only a monument of sustainability in our city but has also focused on educating others in reducing their carbon footprint and modifying individual behaviours for the better of our planet... It also looks incredible!
6. Brighton Pride | 2nd-4th August 2019
The UK’s biggest pride festival lands on our stoney shores every year, and plans have been put in place to ensure that us humans won’t be the only ones celebrating. Pride organisers have announced they have created a long-term strategy encouraging all businesses across the city to support their green agenda. They will also be encouraging attendees to make use of the many recycling points available across the festival and working to reduce as much single-use plastic as possible.
7. Butterfly Bank | Brighthelm Gardens
Brighton & Hove city council have teamed up with Brighthelm’s trust gardening group and youth ranger volunteers from Sussex Wildlife Trust to plant over 1,000 downland plants in the heart of Brighton. The chalk bank is 17m long and is made of 60 tonnes of chalk, attracting a huge variety of butterflies, bees, and other pollinating insects. At a time where bee populations are at serious lows and posing serious risks to the future of our planet, projects like this are one way that we humans can help out the little guys.
How To On-Page SEO
How To On-Page SEO
Hopefully, you’ve arrived here because you’re getting ready to do your own on-page SEO which is something we absolutely encourage at Creative Bloom! It’s not as confusing or tricky as you might think and regardless of what your website is built in, in 2019, pretty much all website builders have an SEO functionality - so whether you’ve already had a free digital clinic with Ollie & Stu or if you’re here for the first time, let’s have a re-cap.
Your website should be shouting about what you do and for Google, you need to be putting the right keywords in the right places. Below, we’re going to break down each element of your page that should be optimised. As our example, let’s say you have an Art Gallery in Bristol.
Choose Your Keyword
Firstly and most importantly, you need to choose a keyword for your page and this should be unique to each page you optimise. So, have a search on google for the types of keywords a visitor would be inputting and ask people you know! Sometimes we have a bias view of what we think people are searching for. If you’re a local business putting a location keyword is a key factor in ranking locally.
In this instance, I would assume the search would be ‘Bristol Art Gallery’ or ‘Art Galley In Bristol’. You can use a keyword planner to see how popular these searches are. We’re going to go with ‘Bristol Art Gallery’.
Page Title
Your page title (in blue below) is the first element Google reads about your page and this is somewhat ‘hidden’ from a visitor in the tab in your browser.
In this instance our gallery isn’t well known yet so there is no reason to put our brand name right at the beginning because no-one will be searching for it but they WILL be searching for our keyword.
As we’ve chosen our keyword as ‘Bristol Art Gallery’ we’re going to make our homepage title as so: ‘Bristol Art Gallery | The Creative Bloom Gallery’.
As you go through other pages on your site, you could choose keyword variants for those pages that users might search for, for example ‘Bristol Art Dealer’, ‘Art Gallery Exhibition Bristol’, ‘Contemporary Art Gallery Bristol’ etc.
Header (H1)
Your H1 is typically the main heading on your page (see below). This should ideally start with your keyword that you have chosen - ‘Bristol Art Gallery’. We understand this ideally may not sit quite right with the aesthetics of your page, however, without having your keyword in your header, less people will find your page. We’re all about driving more traffic to your pages and getting you more customers!
Note: Your pages should only have ONE H1! If you have any more headings on your page after your main header, make sure you change their heading tag to (H2) sub headings or (H3) sub-sub headings etc.
Keywords In Your Content
Next Google will be reading your content. You’ve already told it that you’re optimising for ‘Bristol Art Gallery’ so now it’s going to check your content to make sure you are who you say you are. That means, in the first paragraph you need to include your keyword ‘Bristol Art Gallery’ however you can. You can see how we’ve managed to incorporate the keyword into our first paragraph (below).
Note: don’t forget to include semantics. Similar words to your keyword that other sites are likely to be talking about. In this instance, with art galleries we should be including semantic keywords such as ‘paintings’ ‘contemporary’ ‘specialist’ ‘exhibition’ ‘collectibles’ ‘collections’ etc.
Alt Text - Image Keywords
Name your images! When looking to edit your page, you will notice when importing or editing images there will be an option to input ‘Alt text’ or ‘Alternative Text’. This just means a keyword to tell Google what this image is - therefore it’s an opportunity to put your keyword in there.
In our example, if we have two images on our page, I will call the alt-text on one ‘Bristol Art Gallery’ and the other ‘Art Gallery In Bristol’ - easy.
Note: don’t get too worried about going through every single image on your site. It’s simply that the more signposting you do to tell Google what your website it about, the better - Image Alt-text is an easy way to do add another positive signal.
And that’s it really. Do that for all your pages, or (if you have a lot) for your main parent/navigation pages and over time you should slowly start to see your rankings improving. You should still work on creating new content, driving traffic to your pages through different mediums, trying to get links from other websites etc. But this is the solid foundation to start getting you found on Google!
If you have any questions about this article, want to enquire about SEO training with us or anything else SEO related please get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.
Local SEO in 2021 - Podcast With Social Brighton
Local SEO Tips in 2021 - Podcast
Creative Bloom’s Stu was delighted to be a guest on Social Brightons podcast, hosted by Kerry Watkins to demystify digital and talk through the latest local SEO tips in 2020. We love the team and all the work Social Brighton do! Listen to the podcast below:
Customer behaviour in ‘search land’ is changing & is clearly influenced by Google’s most recent updates. Your Local SEO strategy might need to adapt to keep up the pace.
As far as Google is concerned, in 2019 its looking for quality and not quantity and so are your customers! It is far better to add a page that adds real value to your customers rather than producing pages to gain search rankings or creating thinly populated or duplicated content. Your local rankings won’t benefit from these tactics no matter how you tweak them.
Stu’s top tip: Have a look at your website, read the content out loud, do the same for your closest competitors & ask yourself the question: do you deserve to rank?
Google’s updates have not only changed its algorithm but improved the way it displays information about businesses. Potential customers are no longer browsing multiple sites to compare and find their desired service; instead, they are using the vast ocean of information that Google gives them via your Google My Business Page (GMB page). So ensure you pay attention to what’s appearing on the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) and ensure you are on those platforms.
When customers want to access your phone number, review your track record, opening times and upcoming events, they are no longer looking at your website but are expecting to find that information on your GMB page. As Googles & users behaviour changes, your first chance to make an impression on potential customers is by taking advantage of your Google My Business profile and uploading all the information you can and make it sparkle. Here is where you get to own your space - so make it count.
SEO’s are in 100% agreement that Google My Business (GMB) ranking signals will play a much more important for SEO in 2019, especially for local SEO. However, many businesses are not yet paying attention to this new important aspect of local search, so making the most out of your Google My Business page can be a quick and easy way to make you shine brighter than your competition.
Here are our top tips to get you ahead of the race:
Make sure your business name is correct and consistent, don’t play around with variations, make sure your address is correct, and the map pin is placed in the right spot: you don’t want to send potential customers off on a wild goose chase trying to find your physical location! Also pick the best street view image for your business (and not of bins behind the back!) If your business address is your home consider a virtual office or join a co-working as seeing a residential address can cast doubt on the credibility of the business
Make sure you’ve got a local phone number listed if possible, it’s easy to get one via VOIP if needed, make sure your correct opening hours are listed & match those on your website: you don't want to confuse Google! You need to be consistent in order to prove your validity as a business
Most importantly make sure you choose the right categories, choose the fewest and most specific categories: use these predefined categories to reflect what you actually do, it will determine what keywords you will appear for. Pick three key words to describe your business and see what your competitors are optimising for. Here is a great post on choosing the right GMB category by Bright local
Make sure you’ve got great photos & videos, of you, your people, your office & products and videos uploaded: express your brand identity! Show off your style and don't forget to swap them out every now and again to keep it fresh. Videos are one of the best way to boost engagement and catch peoples eyes so make the most out of them and use them to your advantage
Make sure you’ve got a great aggregate review score – at least a 4.5: make sure to respond to every review to highlight that you care about what customers have to say! Google isn't sending you those review emails for no reason ;)
Make sure to update and add any events, and other posts you are hosting through Google Posts: it’s a great way to promote your events quickly and easily while ensuring that you are targeting the relevant people AND you are adding content where Google wants you to
Make sure that you’re monitoring your questions and answers which is a relatively new feature: answer new questions quickly and if needed ask/answer your own questions so that commonly requested information is easily available so it becomes your FAQ page on GMB
The final point is that you need to take your business wizard hat off and look at your profile as a first time customer. Is all your information readily available? Is it easy to understand and access? Does your business look appealing & compelling? Would you buy from it?
So keep up to date with how your local SEO strategy needs to change alongside Google’s updates and focus on your Google My Business Page. You’ll show up better in local searches, and gain more conversions!
How to Create a Successful Marketing Strategy
At Bloom Towers, we often find that some clients & marketing managers struggle to get traction with their marketing campaigns. In the bewildering landscape of digital marketing it can be hard to work out the right way forward for your business marketing - ‘should I invest more in SEO? Or a content strategy? Or focus on social media?’ A bad marketing strategy can tank your business - just ask these bears.
Fear not! We are here to guide you through the digital labyrinth.
Successful marketing strategies start with thorough diagnosis
For us strategy is all about identifying the key challenges you face in your competitive & business landscape and creating the means of overcoming them. An effective marketing strategy can be fundamental in allowing a business to effectively build value in it’s brand, services or products.
Creative Bloom’s approach to Digital Marketing strategy takes inspiration from a US strategist called Richard Rumelt and his book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters (2011) (we suggest get a copy if you haven’t read it). Rumelt explains that strategy should not be defined by ambition, leadership, vision or planning; but a coherent action backed by an argument, and we agree entirely. For Rumelt, the essence of a successful strategy is thorough diagnosis of a situation, creating an overall guiding policy to overcome challenges and the design of coherent action plan, that is driven to effect.
So, applied to marketing, a good strategy can be broken down into three key ideas.
Diagnosis: getting to grips with what’s really going on. This involves effort and a deep analysis of your current marketing efforts & available resources, the competitive landscape you operate in. You need to gain insights into your market environment, your customers and assess your competition and internal situation. These insights are important as Rumelt says “an especially insightful diagnosis can transform one’s view of the situation, bringing a radically different perspective to bear.” When a digital marketing diagnosis is carried out properly, it will correctly inform how you respond to weaknesses/challenges.
A Guiding Policy; the purpose of this is to direct your actions, it is the context in which your actions are made and helps to ‘guide’ them. “It is like a signpost, marking the direction forward but not defining the details of the trip”, the guiding policy should outline the overall approach for tackling the weaknesses you identified with your deep diagnosis. An example of a successful guiding policy is Barcelona FC who developed a guiding policy of embracing ‘Total Football’ throughout the club in the 1970s to then become a powerhouse in European club football.
Coherent Action; strategy is nothing without action or measurement. Just as a diagnosis informs the guiding policy, the guiding policy informs the coherent action to achieve your goal. These actions should be coherent, consistent and coordinated. “A good strategy doesn’t just draw on existing strength; it creates strength through the coherence of its design” , these actions should support and build upon each other, steadily building towards the goal. Performance measurement is critical for good strategy: Are our actions making an impact? Is the strategy working? Do we need to adjust things?
Only through the process of regular performance monitoring can you develop a successful marketing strategy, be prepared & geared up to adapt.
In summary, when all three areas have been considered and you haven’t rushed or skipped any steps, you can maximise your opportunities of delivering fantastic results!
NEED SOME HELP? WE ARE HERE TO ASSIST
CONTACT US TO HELP YOU CREATE AN IMPACTFUL MARKETING STRATEGY
An Eco-Friendly Guide To Brighton
Brighton is leading the way with its eco-friendly conscience, something that is reflected in its huge range of ethical shops. Our city is filled to the brim with second hand goodies, handmade treasures and multitudes of cafes boasting their eco-friendly morals. At times it can be overwhelming, so where should you start?
Your breakdown starter-kit for eco-friendly shopping in Brighton:
Small Batch Coffee: Brighton , 17 Jubilee St, BN1 1GE
They started off as a small family run business, and despite their growth they still treat their workers like family! Their coffee comes from 20 countries, that fit into their Farm to Cup philosophy. They aim to develop long term relationships with their coffee producers by buying from them year after year, visiting them to understand the challenges they face and paying sustainable prices significantly higher than the Fair Trade minimum.
Brighton Repair Cafe: 33 Southover Street, Hanover Centre,BN2 9UD
Giving things a new lease of life; repairing and reusing is the motto of The Brighton Repair Cafe. They are open on the last Saturday of the month (apart from December) and with help from craftsmen and volunteers; they can fix everything from clothing to electronics. Plus you can have a cuppa, while you learn some new skills on how to extend the life of your beloved items!
Wolf and Gypsy Vintage: 30 Sydney Street, North Laine, Wolf & Gypsy Vintage, , BN1 4EP
Shopping secondhand is one of the best ways to ensure your spending habits are eco-friendly. The crew at Wolf and Gypsy Vintage not only repair worn items and source incredible vintage bits but they also sell beautiful new pieces of clothing. They love to collaborate with local artists and specialists, so keep your eyes peeled for unique campaigns.
Dowse Design: 27 Gloucester Rd, BN1 4AQ
At Dowse Design they believe in collaborating with people they know are fairly paid for their work. Their Brighton shop showcases their range of jewellery, homewares and more alongside other pieces of work from great independent small businesses & designers. So you can rest easy, knowing you are supporting the incredible talent that Brighton has to offer.
Need more tips for eco-friendly shopping?
Check out ‘The Pebble Guide to Brighton’ ; a simple way to check what great eco shops and community projects are happening around Brighton.
Have you heard about ‘The Brighton Elephant’?
The Brighton Elephant
You know the scene… you get off the bus in Brighton, ready for a great Friday night on the seafront. You get to the bar, order your drink and maybe think about getting something to line your stomach for the impending night ahead...
A great big plastic cup comes flying towards you. It feels flimsy in your hand. It looks and feels cheap. You know you won’t be allowed to use it again, and you can’t see a recycling bin in the surrounding area.
Or you decide to go for a walk along the seafront. It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon in your beloved town, and you feel like being a tourist. You start off with a coffee to walk along the beach with. You receive your plastic lined cup and wonder if the vendor uses biodegradable cups. They don’t. Now what? You go get a selection of lovely local sea food – some lovely prawns, some jellied eel and maybe some pickled whelks! Why not! It’s the weekend! Oh, but that’s in some nasty polystyrene too. And again, you can’t see any recycling bins nearby.
So you sit on the beach… with your plastic cup full of beer, or your polystyrene container full of seafood. And as you finish up, you pop it next to you, and continue to look out to sea. A gust of wind blows your container towards the sea. You jump up, conscious not to let it go in. You wouldn’t want some poor sea creature to suffer because of your single use plastic, so you chase after it and catch it. As you straighten yourself up, you look around for a recycling bin. You can’t see any, so you resign to carrying it until you find one.
You don’t find one, so you prop it on top the overflowing bin you can find, and hope it gets picked up soon, before it gets blown into the sea.
You carry this plastic container with you all night, thinking about it, heavy on your mind. You wonder if the next bar will serve your drink or meal in plastic too.
“What’s the solution?” you ponder. Bring a container with you? Maybe a reusable coffee cup! Or you could keep cutlery in your handbag! And one of those modern new steel straws you saw at the Open Market the other day!
That’s it, you think. I’m going to change this mess, even if it’s just me.
You feel empowered. You’re making a change.
Because you love your town, and you want to care for it.
One reusable item at a time.
We suggest a few of the following as a starter kit to getting you on the way to being plastic free whilst out and about.
Guide To SEO - Basics To Get You Started
Search engine optimisation may seem a bit scary initially, but trust us, it’s only the jargon that’s a bit overwhelming. When you take away the fancy wording and hone in on what Search Engine Optimisation actually is, you’ll realise you can start cracking on with it yourself! To start with, SEO comes down to knowing your customer and using quite a bit of common sense. In digital marketing, truly knowing your customers is vital and that’s no different when it comes to SEO. We want to give you a basic understanding of the 5 key ingredients to cooking up a website brimming with optimised content!
1 | Research, research, research. Keywords, keywords, keywords.
So, first thing’s first. You need to know your customers. You need to know what they’re searching for and how they’re searching for it. You need to understand the language that they’re using and where they’re looking for you. It’s important to collate all of this information in a clear format and understand when and where your keywords should be used. This will come in very handy!
n.b. Don’t just assume you already know your customers! This is the most common mistake. Take a look at your analytics and see who’s browsing your site, ask around and approach this with an open mind.
2 | Titles and Descriptions
The next step is to use what you’ve learnt previously to ensure all of your page titles are optimised using your keywords and you have incorporated these into your meta descriptions too. All of this will help to ‘label’ your content so that search engines have a better chance of finding you.
3 | Content is key(words)
Similarly to your titles and descriptions, you need to ensure your content includes plenty of keywords, directing it towards search engines. Content should be optimised in few ways:
•Headers
•Body Text
•Images
•URL Slug
Just remember not to keyword stuff! That’s when you’re stuffing so many similar keywords into your content to a point where it is no longer legible or naturally flowing. This can be detrimental to your search ranking and it’s likely any user who reads it will just turn away.
4 | Your website isn’t the be all and end all
Although your website plays a huge part in your overall SEO, it’s important not to forget about the rest of your online presence. Social media and citations on listings are also important and search engines regard these websites highly. Remember to keep everything up to date, consistent and as optimised as possible.
5 | Linkbuilding Gives you power
A good way to think about links is like votes. Links act as pointers to your website, leading search engines to believe you are trustworthy and indicating legitimacy. Links from higher ranking websites should in turn increase your visibility, but make sure that the links are relevant and trustworthy themselves!
If you have any questions or want to learn more, get in touch with us!
Four Brighton Charities We Love And Think You Will Too!
We want to share some amazing charities we work with and a few that we think are doing great things in Brighton and the surrounding areas. We get so much pleasure in partnering with charities that are doing good and we really want you to see what they are up to!
ONCA Gallery supports the wellbeing of people and places by increasing awareness of, and engagement with, environmental and social challenges. They partner with local and international artists to embrace a diverse perspective and try to foster more inclusive creative practices. They are a space for meeting, thinking, learning and celebrating art!
Contact the ONCA Gallery: 01273 607101
Sussex Prisoners’ Families is a community interest company which supports local families to cope emotionally and practically with the imprisonment of a loved-one. They offer support and advice to families as well as training and awareness-raising for professionals so that they can better meet families’ needs.
Contact Sussex Prisoners’ Families: 01273 499843
The Railway Land Wildlife Trust consists of a beautiful nature reserve and The Linklater Pavilion. They inspire environmental sustainability by bringing nature to the heart of Lewes. They aim to achieve this goal by running the Linklater building as a community- based hub for the understanding of a sustainable environment, providing inclusive outdoor learning using innovative approaches and supporting the local authority in managing the Railway Land nature reserve for the whole community.
Contact the Railway Land Wildlife Trust: 01273 477101
Sussex Oakleaf provides a range of support services to people with mental health needs, those with a personality disorder and individuals at risk of homelessness. They empower people and promote independence by providing recovery focused community wellbeing services, residential care, peer mentoring, housing support and volunteering opportunities.
If you need to speak to someone about your mental health out of hours then please use the following numbers.
Sussex Mental Health Line – 0300 5000 101
Samaritans – 116 123 or jo@samaritans.org
NHS, non emergency number – 111
SANEline – 0300 304 7400
Give Your Business A Head Start & Navigate The Cobbled Streets
Give Your Business A Head Start & Navigate The Cobbled Streets
Running your business can sometimes feel like trying to tackle an incredibly uneven road surface in incredibly inappropriate footwear. No matter where you go, or which part of the road looks smooth there are inevitable hiccups, trips, bumps and set-backs. This is why, truly understanding your business and how other people perceive your business is vital. Do you have everything you need? Have you taken advantage of the free stuff out there?
Small Business Tips to Improve Your Strategy:
Know Your Customer - Data Doesn’t Lie
Important foundations to a business are paramount to success. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, start-up or already established, there will undoubtedly be areas you could improve, refine or introduce (if you haven’t already). Knowing your customer for example, do you truly know your audience? This is not necessarily who you ‘want’ to be your customer, or asking others who they ‘think’ your customers are. Use the data available to you! Remember that Google Analytics account you’ve never looked at? As well as Google Search Console & Social Channel Analytics - they can all tell you exactly who is on your site, where they’re coming from and what they’re doing when they get there. Take some time and dive into your traffic analytics, you will likely be pleasantly surprised what you can find out.
Understand The Basics & Better Equip Yourself
The murky world of Digital Marketing, SEO, PPC etc. can all be quite overwhelming if you’re exploring it for the first time. However, if you take some time to understand the basics in these areas, you will be able to better understand what your business needs, be better equipped to explain to others what you need and you’ll also end up saving yourself money! So eventually, what, 6 months ago you would’ve paid an agency to do for your SEO, you can now jump on and fix yourself.
Have a look at how fast your website is running with Pingdom. If your results say you’re below 2.5 seconds, give yourself a high five. If not, then you are provided with the information you could give to your developer to help improve this. You just became better equipped!
Competitors - Online & Offline
Stella and Jimmela have a flower shop where they take lots of online orders. Just because Olivia has a flower shop across the street does not necessarily make Olivia their competitor - Especially as she doesn’t even have an online website. So understanding your online competitors is extremely important as they are likely not who you think they are.
Jump on Google, type a few variations of your service or product into the search box and see what the results say! Do maps appear? Do some competitors appear for multiple searches? Now you can try and work out why they may be ranking higher than you (or lower) and employ some tactics that they’re using to better compete!
Still itching to learn more about how you can supercharge your own business? Check out our two day digital marketing course that will give you all the tools you need to propel yourself past your competitors.
Three Essentials Of Getting Local SEO To Work
You can't have Batman without Robin. You can't have Wallace without Gromit. And you cannot have a local business without local SEO! If you aren't on the local digital map then there's a very high likelihood that you'll be missing out on lots of potential opportunities that would otherwise be heading your way.
We understand that digital marketing can seem overwhelming, with lots of technical jargon being thrown at you left, right and centre. However we have a fantastic Local SEO training workshop that will provide you with a no-nonsense, no-jargon approach to digital marketing, in particular local SEO. To give you a taste of what you'll learn about, here are some very simple yet effective ways that you can begin the journey of growing your business locally.
Your 'Google My Business' Account
Google My Business is the best place to start. This gives you your very own little chunk of Google real-estate, helping your customers to find out information about you, including opening hours, address and images of your products and services. Google also lets you post information about deals and helps promote what's happening on your social media pages. It encourages your customers to leave reviews by making as easy as possible for them to just log on and express their upmost admiration and appreciation for your business. Google also keeps an eye on the other big review sites such as Facebook, Yelp and Trip Advisor, so encouraging reviews across the board is important.
Make It Easy To Be Found
A citation is a reference of your business on a directory or local business listing (Name, Address, Postcode etc.). You should add and maintain citations of your business using some of the many software platforms available, such as Moz Local, Brightlocal or Whitespark. Your local citations should stay consistent across the board, so when you're uploading them to any website or listing, always ensure that they match. If you change address, or phone number, make it a priority to go through all of your online platforms and update all of your citations. You can tell google what your website is about by ensuring you use local schema markup. This code applied to your website alongside citations will all count towards your Google ranking.
Creating Content
Although you must ensure that you are using the correct keywords for your business, it's important to remain user friendly as much as possible - Google has an eye on that too. Local keywords can be effectively used within written content, however, it's important to spread them out amongst title tags, alt tags and headers to avoid keyword stuffing. Internal linking within content also helps to boost that local ranking. Look for way to include links on local directories and other businesses, perhaps even approach a local blogger to help get people linking back onto your site.
We've only hit the tip of the iceberg here but sign up to our next Local SEO workshop if you want to get stuck in.
How to Reduce Plastic Waste at Festivals and Events
The hot British Summer is in full swing and we're well into the festival season now. If you're anything like me, you'll love soaking up the summer whilst enjoying a bit of music and culture outdoors. I recently joined a 40,000 strong crowd for a music festival in London. By the end of the evening and a couple of beers down, I was so swept up in the excitement of the headliner's encore, that I thought I would be going home with a lingering sense of contentment (and perhaps some ringing in my ears). As the crowds descended into the evening, the feeling quickly disappeared as I was followed by an overwhelming sound of crunching. As I looked back, I was shocked to see a dense carpet of plastic pint glasses strewn on the ground, and being crushed underfoot. Sadly, this scene is all too familiar during the festival season.
At Creative Bloom, we wanted to challenge the issue that has become a norm amongst festival-goers and organisers. There are many actions that we can take to have some fun in the sun in a more environmentally responsible way. We partnered up with 'Surfers Against Sewage' and the 'Paddle Round the Pier' event and some other fabulous local activists to try to tackle the issue.
Our project began last year, when members of Creative Bloom along with SAS volunteers, conducted a waste audit at the 2017 Paddle Round the Pier event. This included a review of food and drinks packaging and promotional material that was being supplied by stallholders, availability of segregated recycling bins and guidelines of how and where waste should be deposited. After conducting this audit, guidelines were created to help to inform stallholders of ways to help reduce the production of plastic waste at the 2018 Paddle Round the Pier event.
Although some stallholders found this task a little too tall, many were up for the challenge. Alongside Surfers Against Sewage we helped to arrange two beach cleans after the event and our very own Stuart Davies and local designer Claire Potter held talks throughout the weekend about how to reduce plastic waste as the Hove Local SAS Representatives. During this year's event, Jimmy from Bloom also held a second waste audit to see ways in which the festival had improved since last year, chatting to some attendees & stall holders and discussing their thoughts on the issue.
These are only small steps that have been taken, but already we have seen a great reduction in the amount of plastic waste created at the Paddle Round the Pier Event. The festival's organisers, stallholders and attendees have shown that with the right attitude, events both large and small are are able to achieve this reduction in plastic waste. We are aware that this is part of a process to try to tackle the issue, but small actions and conversations are a great starting point to help resolve the current plastic problem within Brighton and Hove.
It’s very simple to do - start your own conversation and watch change start to happen.
Top Ways to Encourage People to Review Your Business
Why are online reviews so important?
Whether you are an online or offline business, reviews are a crucial element to your success. A whopping 97% of consumers read online reviews and more than half of those people need to read four or more before they can trust the business. Reviews can give you feedback on ways to improve your business and help to prove its legitimacy. Good reviews can also help to improve your SEO. Just as a user will be more likely to trust a business with good reviews, search engines will trust them in the same way. Google, in particular, will gather information from several review websites and if it likes what it sees, will help to push your ranking up. All of these advantages will put your business in the best position to lead to that greatly sought after sale or sign up.
Tips for Online Reviews
Set it up
It's up to you to get your business listed on review sites. Tripadvisor, Yelp, and Facebook are all well known review websites, but certain sites are better than others for your particular sector. Dig a little deeper to find out which review site suits your business best and make sure that you're listed. Once this is done, you will have a link that you can forward on to any customer or client you wish!
If you don't ask, you don't get
We can all be a little shy at times when it comes to asking for feedback directly, but this should really be commonplace in any business. During a conversation in person or even on a social platform, asking directly for feedback and reviews can come back with plenty of results. These can be taken as soundbites and testimonials to be used for web or social content - don't be afraid of blowing your own trumpet!
Keep it easy
A 'thank you' email after an online purchase with a link to your review page makes it easy for anybody to just click and review. They're already online with your business in mind, so what's to stop them? You can automate emails to send as soon as a call to action sign up or transaction has been completed to make it super simple.
Don't forget 'Google My Business'
Make sure that all of your relevant information is updated on your 'Google My Business' page and get your Google review link to send to your customers. Around 9% of Google's ranking algorithms are based on reviews - that's a good chunk to influence your SEO.
Reply, reply, reply.
It's all fine and well to gain the trust of your customers and clients but keeping it is just as important. Bad reviews will come along every now and again but it's not the end of the world. Someone who has not had a good experience with your business will be far more likely to return if any negative feedback is acknowledged and dealt with quickly and efficiently. So it's important to keep an eye on good and bad reviews to make sure your customers feel like they're being taken care of.
Follow these simple tips and you'll be well on your way to building reviews online and helping to increase your business's success. Believe us - it's important.
The New Way to Network: Why we think old-school business events should be a thing of the past.
We all know the standard networking event format. You arrive at a swanky venue, slap on a name tag and proceed to wonder around the room clutching a glass of red and nodding your way into conversations with strangers. Then there's shaking hands whilst holding both a paper plate & glass of wine (a very difficult task) and leaving with pockets full of business cards. This is the classic 'old-school networking event'. We do understand the need for these events and how important getting out there and chatting to other businesses is, but we'd much rather do it in a different way!
Brighton is home to one of the most thriving communities of start-ups, freelancers, organisations and charities, all enthusiastic to get to know one another. In turn, there are a whole host of exciting events that cater to many different industries. We would much rather have a chat with someone during a workshop, take part in an open discussion or try out a new product to learn about how we can collaborate. Laid-back events can lead to a true sense of trust and create an atmosphere of fun, where ideas and real in-depth conversations can be exchanged. Exactly how we believe business should be!
Here are some of our favourite events to meet new contacts in Brighton:
TEDx
Brighton
If you haven't heard of TEDx then this is certainly the time to learn about it. These inspirational talks are usually held at Brighton Dome and give an insight into a whole host of industries. You'll get talks from speakers such as Dom Joly from Trigger Happy TV and Steven Day, Co-Founder of Pure Planet and Renewable Energy Expert. By the end of the evening you'll definitely have something to talk about with fellow attendees.
Wired Sussex
This organisation has been bringing the digital community of Sussex together for over a decade, hosting events all over the city. They provide a platform for freelancers, start-ups and bigger businesses to connect through workshops, breakfast sessions, talks and loads more.
Toast
The hosts of Toast Brighton began running their breakfasts after they became bored of the usual corporate networking events - just like us! That's why they run events to create a buzz around networking and make it fun and relaxed. You can mingle around a breakfast buffet and leave feeling inspired after hearing from one of their motivational speakers.
PECHA KUCHA
This is a similar one to TEDx Brighton but on a slightly smaller scale. Local people and small organisations can get involved to share the story of what they're doing. With only 20 slides of 20 seconds each, the talks are short and fast-paced, giving time to include more speakers that add variety to the evening. If you're thinking of attending, the PechaKucha Brighton website has a whole host of past talks you can check out before you go.
Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce
This business community hosts events both large and small, from conferences to workshops. Though you'll have to pay for membership, it's well worth it, as the Chamber of Commerce really does act as a central hub for local businesses - giving you so many opportunities and connections. They have a great selection of events so you have loads of choice of what to attend.
Green Growth Platform
Hosted by Brighton University, the Green Growth Platform provides a network for sustainable businesses to meet as well as offering business support to them. Their upcoming events include marketing workshops and courses on sustainability in action.
O N C A
With sustainability, creativity and community driving everything they do,
O N C A provides a space to create and expand a network of individuals and communities with the same values. They hold regular events such as storytelling evenings, workshops and artist's talks at their gallery on London Road, welcoming those looking to host events of their own.
GLUG
If you're a creative type you'll probably have come across Glug already, but if not we'll tell you a little about it. This event is always packed to the brim with graphic designers, illustrators, animation wiz kids and loads of other creative people. Often held at the Patterns nightclub, the evening could begin with a mingle around the bar, trying out VR headsets, watching live art or pulling your own screen print. This gets everyone chatting before the line-up of speakers begin. Past speakers have included David Shrigley, Supermundane and Kyle Bean. Get ready to be inspired!
Brighton Meetup
We're cheating slightly on this one but felt it was too great a networking platform to miss out. If you haven't come across Meetup yet then we urge you to give it a go! This is a great space to create online communities, find people with similar interests in Brighton and take part in those interests together. You are encouraged to create your own events and invite your group to take part. So if we haven't listed an event that you would be looking for here, then check out the Meetup site and see if it exists. If not, we'll leave it up to you get it up and running.
All of these events are held in Brighton and are great ways of creating relationships with people outside of 'work mode'. Organic conversations that come from a shared experience or topical point are far more worthwhile and memorable than those which aren't. But we'd say the best way of getting out there is by hosting an event of your own!