Do you sometimes find yourself staring at an empty screen with the cursor tapping it’s impatient foot while you’re trying to figure out what to write for your blog post that week?
Writer’s block happens to all of us and coming up with fresh content on regular basis takes work, but what makes it all worth it is circling back to why your write in the first place: Your audience, your dream customers, your brand cheerleaders. The people that like, comment and share your work or verbally tell you how much they enjoyed reading your posts and how much it helps them and improves their work. Picturing those people in your head and thinking about what their needs are and how you can help them can be the key to unlocking your content block
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We hear most of our client say that they feel like they're flying by the seat of their pants when it comes to their marketing. They say things like, "Right now I'm just throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. Or I'm just trying different things but I have no overarching direction. Or I want to establish my company as a brand, not just another voice in the noise." So this week I'm dedicating this blog post to the overwhelmed, the confused, and those of you who know you need to be marketing but aren't sure what exactly that looks like. Here are our three steps to getting out of marketing overwhelm.
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This month’s roundup of what to read, watch, listen and do this May by Prim’d “Inspo Curator” Sophie Davies is a mixed bag that evokes joyful creativity through different forms. This month includes a way to channel your inner badass for greatness, storytelling through art, a witty dose of pop culture and the stunning beauty of couture evolving over five decades. Enjoy!
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Your brand values are the main things that your brand represents and stands for, it is the heart and soul of your business.
Brand values are the principles that distill the essential qualities of you, as a business owner, and your business. They also acts as the plumb lines of your brand, define what makes you stand out from competitors, help you measure success and weigh up the right opportunities to avoid making the wrong decision.
Do you know what your brand values are? You probably have a good but perhaps foggy idea, which could be contributing to feeling fragmented or stuck between options. You feel passionate about your great product or service but sometimes feel it's hard to know how to talk to about your passion or idea in a way that a potential customer can understand and value it.
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A Personal Vs Professional Social Account - Which One Should I use?
A question we often get asked by workshop attendees and clients is: When do I use a personal versus professional social account?
It's not a clear cut answer and depends on the type of business. It also relies on you making the right decision for you and your business. To help you do this here are some things to consider and a few examples of how clients of ours have navigated their personal and professional Facebook and Instagram accounts for business.
Let's begin by considering the following questions based on your brand’s message and value...
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This week's question comes from one of our fellow Hivery Members, who is launching a new app that she's been working on for several months. Her words:
I've created my target audience profiles. I've written down my "why." But I don't know what I'm supposed to do next. I'm overwhelmed by what I am supposed to do first, or where I am supposed to be putting my efforts. I wish I just had an action list that could tell me what to do.
Well, I can tell you that she is not alone. Most of our clients feel exactly like this when they start working with us....
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Jenni here, and today's blog post comes from a question that we've been asked a couple of times by 3 or 4 clients over the last week. The question went something like this:
"What do I need to do to get my idea off the ground? I don't want to look shitty, but I don't want to prevent myself from getting out there at all, you know?"
Like I mentioned, this is at least the 3rd time this week I've heard this question, so I thought I'd address it here on the blog. Let's talk a little bit about this magical thing called minimum viable products, and how you can get stuff out there without damaging your brand.
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As female creatives entrepreneurs keeping inspired and up-to-date on fellow business and women out there who can teach us something new each day keeps life sweet and interesting.
Here are my recommendations this month on an inspiring book to read about building a brand, a new documentary to watch about a woman who broke many glass ceilings, a podcast to listen to which will help us run your business a bit smarter and a beautiful photography exhibition open in the Bay Area this month about confident and powerful women. Who could ask for more?!
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Do networking events make you sweat?
Yeah, we get that.
Knowing how to explain what you do and who it is for, can be hard, especially when you're still trying to sort through it. Part of our Prim'd Philosophy is making impactful brands through great storytelling, and knowing your narrative is a necessary first step. That's why we've created 'The Brand Plan' to help entrepreneurs get clearer on their vision, know who their target customer is, and have a plan on how to communicate it.
So no more sweaty networking events!
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The importance of creating great content and engaging with your audience on a consistent basis on social media is something we constantly advise our clients (and talk about regularly on this blog). This heightened visibility message has even greater meaning in light of Instagram's latest news about their new algorithm (that will turn the tide across most social media), and it's important you know what that means for your business
Instagram has just announced that over the coming months they will be changing their algorithm to show their users, in their words; “the moments we believe you will care about the most.”
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Jenni here, and today I want to take some time to talk about a question that has come up a lot in the past several weeks. The particulars of the question vary from form or another, but the basis has to do with how you're segmenting (or not segmenting) your ideas, products, or customers across the various places your brand lives on the Internet.
I'm going to give you a couple of examples, the first of which we heard while in a sales class several weeks ago. In the class, we met a woman named Cynthia. Cynthia runs a food delivery and catering business and she said:
"I have two target clients. One is a busy mom that will buy my food direct and the other is a company that will hire me for catering services. Do I need to have a different website for each?"
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We all need to keep educating and inspiring ourselves as creatives entrepreneurs and women. Its definitely food for the soul in my book (pardon the pun) . With that in mind here are my recommendations on a great magazine and book to read, a new documentary to watch, a smart podcast to listen to and a helpful health action item to do this month!
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Great brands don't just happen by accident. Creating a brand people LOVE takes some thought about who you are and what your brand is all about.
What most people think of as "branding" is really just the outermost layer. Really impactful and inspirational brands have a clearer understanding of who they are and what makes them different. They also have clear vision of who are their best clients and their mission of how to help them.
A brand is a set of values that sets the bar for all business decisions and shapes your brand into something concise, distinctive, legitimate.
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Towards the end of last year we worked with K'Dee Miller the owner of video production company, Patina Pictures. K’Dee originally started her business in Los Angeles, in her mid-twenties, when the primary focus was on producing independent feature films. Flash forward ten years, and K’Dee, similar to Patina, had grown and morphed along the way. Despite all of her exciting creative growth and evolution, her original branding remained stagnant; a reminder of Patina’s story circa 2009. Simply told, K’Dee came to Prim’d for a brand re-fresh. But what she discovered while undergoing The Brand Plan was something far more important to Patina’s success than just a good looking logo.
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It probably doesn't surprise you that making a beautiful and effective website doesn't just happen by accident. In fact, we really like to use the analogy of building a house. You'd never just hire a team of contractors to show up at your plot, offer up some piles of wood, concrete and roofing shingles and say, "Ok, let's just get on it with it." But so many people (and sometimes even website teams!) don't take the time to build a solid blueprint or gather the best materials before starting their build.
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A couple of years ago when Jenni and I (a couple of marketers setting up a business for the first time) were starting up Prim’d Marketing we found ourselves constantly asking “how do other business owners do this?” We started by attending a local business course and referring to Google to find the answers to many operational, legal and financial questions but it started to feel isolating in uncharted waters. We soon realized we needed to find a community of people in a similar situation to us that we could turn to for supportive advice, resources and just a friendly ear.
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Jenni here, and it's no secret that when it comes to our partnership dynamic, I am definitely the one who is always geeking out about new systems and technology. I love a good CMS, or automation platform — anything that you can program to "make it do" without having to manually participate. Last October we launched a "Primd 2.0" if you will — new website, and LOTS of new systems to help us tackle growing and scaling in 2016. Today I am going to share with my 3 favorite systems we've implemented in the last 6 months, and why they work for us.
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Are you using social media for your business but unsure how effective your strategy is? Are you ready to refocus your time and energy on social media for 2016? If so we will be offering a workshop that will deep dive into How To Use Social Media Smarter that will give you a better understanding of how to approach each social platform and evaluate other it is right (or wrong) for your specific business. If you are unable to attend our workshop then we have four tips on how to approach your social media strategy and execution in a smarter way.
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Podcasts are not new, and for the last ten years it has mostly been a male dominated media. When you look at the top podcasts in iTunes, gender inequity still exists but the good news is we’re beginning to see a shift in the last couple of years with the rise of podcasts created for women by women (particularly for female business owners). Some of them have become my go-to resource and sets the tone for a great work day.
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One of the really interesting things that happened last year is that we launched a "new" product, Web Ready Kit. This offering seemed to click the rest of our packages into place. I say "new" because all of these services are things we've been doing for clients for years. But it's just been the last 12 — 18 months or so that we've started to formalize this process into even more clear cut steps: