The recording of my webinar for Bath Digital Festival 2020. Here’s the original event blurb

‘Ben will share how to develop a bulletproof content strategy to boost your social media activity and help you get found online through search engine optimisation.

    You’ll learn:
    – A basic strategy you can adapt
    – How to focus on what’s important
    – Tips for generating ideas and making time around work
    – SEO techniques that could get you onto page one’

Fiona Scott from totalswindon.com asking me about our future. N.B. Original post removed so I’m pasting the full original here.

What does Christmas 2020 mean for you in your business? I usually have a rush of project enquiries as we move into December. It seems to be a convenient deadline as people get everything squared away before they break for the holidays, but it’s not a crucial sales time for us.
Personally, I look forward to the Christmas break. I relish the peace from email in the week before and after Christmas. I often use the time to clear the decks to prepare for the new year.

January to March is a crucial time for us as people are buzzing with new ideas and enthusiasm for marketing their business after the Christmas holidays. So I have to be ready to manage the enquiries and work at that time. 

I’m not concerned about COVID-19 restrictions and potential lockdowns as we work online exclusively and have done for the last ten years. However, I have been adapting to Zoom networking online, so this will be an area I need to improve on.

Outside of my Marketing Club’s monthly webinars, I’m looking to run online Website SEO and Website planning events. These topics work well with live demonstrations where I can have fun with the audience. No dates are planned yet but keep an eye on my website for details.

Rather Inventive Marketing is actually 11 on the first of December. I really cannot believe we’ve been running for some long!
At the start of the first lockdown, we offered free membership of our Marketing Club to any charity forever. Next year I’d like to support charities directly with free consultancy and am looking for charities in the Cotswolds that would like help with their website or marketing.

The biggest challenge has been to not to be complacent about the future. I’ve been fortunate to get through this year in a financially stable position, but things could have been drastically different. 
I’m also very much aware that 2020 has been a metaphorical kick to not wait for good things to happen. I just have to put in the hard work.

I feel positive for Rather Inventive but I know that charities and shops will have many challenges over this Christmas.
I can only hope that through this adversity, we’ll see innovation and be able to move beyond this world-changing year in better shape and working together.

Suzanne Scacca at Smashing Magazine on why it’s crucial to help your customers truly test out your app by helping get their data in it.

They’ll be more confident in their decision.
With complete and accurate data transferred into your software, users actually see how valuable it is soon after signing up. This leaves little room for second-guessing their decision, which leads to greater satisfaction overall with the product, and ultimately more money for your business.

We’re currently working with a client who is building a web app where the end user needs to input their live data to truly evaluate the software. It’s a stumbling block, as inputting the data is time consuming and not a job the customer would relish doing. Worse yet, is that the data is often from paper records or needs to be collected in an audit.

To get around this we’ve discussed providing an initial import of a small sub set of data for evaluation along with a personal tour of the software. Then if the customer subscribes to a paid plan the full data set can be added for free. If they have incomplete records then a low cost physical audit can be used to collect the remaining data.

This initial investment into your customer will pay you back quickly with fewer abandoned trials but it can also increase the likelihood of being referred to others.