One of the aspects I’ve struggled to share while networking is that I can do just a single service, or a multi aspect service. People think that I’m either a photographer, or I’m a website designer, or I do graphic design. But, in all honesty, I do all that and mix it in with tech knowledge outside of websites and you get a full business design service.

Every customer coming to your business has an unvoiced question: can you help me overcome my problems?

Your website needs to show that you can and the best way to do that is to write blog posts. We have to actively share what we do, to be known as an expert.

I am a website designer, I’ve had a website for many years and for a lot of that time thought it was enough to have a portfolio website only with no active blog. It worked but mostly because of referrals and people then checked my website to ensure I am actually a WordPress designer and what has my previous work been. That was great for a while but once those networks of reach fizzled out that was that, I need to be found by new people as well as the referral network I’ve built. I need to be able to market outside of my normal sphere of influence .. blogging will enable me to do that because there is one thing that Google loves: valuable content delivered in a blog. Especially when there is a question posed and answered.

Let me put this in you mind. When you search for something on google, do you ask a question? If you do, then those results come from those who have answered it. Most are forum websites but a few are direct service websites and those people who did that and got indexed are the winners.

So now I am blogging, it takes effort to write content but long term it is worth it because your website is your marketing powerhouse if used well.

What can we share and do to be known as an expert?

It’s possible to do to show you are an expert in a few ways:

1. Have a gallery portfolio of your work, if you can show physically what you do

As I wrote above, a portfolio website is a great start to showing you are an expert in what you do, because you have a gallery of images to show that you are. Simply because you’ve already done the work for others.

You can see my portfolio page here. This is what I mean by a portfolio website, it must have an area that displays the work you do, either in a single page design or a separate page name gallery or portfolio. That way Google knows it is something important.

2. Write about what you do and share answers to commonly asked questions

If you think about it for a few minutes, whenever you tell people in your everyday life what you do in your business .. those people will ask you questions. Are you answering those questions on your website? If you’re not, you not being a resource and a proven expert for your potential customer to trust.

Can you solve a problem for me? Can you prove it by already answering a question, that I as your potential customer, may ask? If you do this you already, then you have raised your ‘trust’ levels because you’ve provided value by answering their question.

3. Write about questions your customer needs to think about but may not know to ask

I experienced this recently on LinkedIn a network contact of mine, a solicitor, wrote a question about power of attorney but in regards to business. Who will take power over my business accounts if I were to unexpectedly die? Something I’ve never thought about but will do now!

You have within your knowledge, an experience of things that your customers will not have thought about. Why not ask and answer the question as a blog post. Prove your expertise by asking questions on behalf of your clients that they would not think to ask.

4. Write about the things you want to be known for

Beyond being the person that offers a service, we are well-rounded people too .. hopefully! I build websites, branding and more but, I want to be known for raising people up to be able to do more for yourselves. To give you the skills to be great online, be found and stand out in the ways you wish to.

I want you to be able to say: “I designed a life I love” which comes from choosing how to do business that supports the way you wish to live. Your website will help enable you to do that with purpose and intent.

What do you wish to be known for? Tell people that.

5. Share a customer testimonial

Every happy customer of yours is a source of proof that you do good work and are an expert in what you do. Ask for that testimonial, don’t think (like I used to) that if they are happy they’ll write one from the goodness of their heart. People are busy, life moves on. Do you think oh I’ll take two minutes and write a testimonial for someone .. I’d bet that would happen rarely unless it was an unexpectedly great service and even then .. it’s a maybe.

Ask your customers for testimonials and then as and when you get them, sprinkle that goodness around as social proof that you’re good at what you do.

As a fellow Brit, its hard to break that conditioning of not stating out loud what we are good at .. I’m inviting you to join me in breaking that unwritten rule. If we don’t talk about what we are good at, how on earth will someone new to us ever know that?!

So get talking to others, get writing for google to find you, settle those shoulder down and help yourself be visible.

So I’m going to do as that worldwide known book says by Susan Jeffers, feel the fear and do it anyway [affiliate link], but I’m making my own hashtag called #LeanIntoFearAndTry

Why should I blog? Why should I use my voice and share it with others, who would listen? I’m learning to flip these questions into the positives. Do you want to be found? Do you want to share what you know and help others achieve their goals? If you don’t then I hope you’ll be happy staying a small business with fluctuating work .. for me, I’m ready to grow further.

I have things I can share, teach, and do to inspire you to use your own voice online. I will lead by example, I don’t want to be a person that is ‘do what I say and not what I do’ .. that doesn’t sit well with me. I want to show that anything is possible to do, by doing it.

You can be social on social media.

One way to start using your voice to to create a social media account on Instagram or a Facebook page and start posting your content there. A thing to note about posting on social media is that any content that is posted on there can be deleted by the platform, demoted in how it’s being shown to others, that the network you share on has the ultimate power and their aim, isn’t always to promote you.

Yet the great thing about social networks is that you are able to be with your ideal client in a space they already feel comfortable. So you can chat with them, show them what you do, leave a comment on their post, search for hashtags and join in those conversations. Just remember, you don’t own that network and they can disappear .. as unlikely as it feels that Instagram or Pinterest could no longer exist, it is a possibility. So don’t put all your eggs in one basket or expect a long term money tree when someone else can come along and cut it down.

You can be the boss on your own website

This is the power of having your own website. You are the owner of your own content, the voice that you share. This is your space online and you have the power to control how it functions, what it says, how it shares out from the website into the internet, eg. onto social media. Once you have your own website platform people know where to go to learn more, to interact with you and ask questions via blog post comments, to buy your product or service. This is your business online and once you have visitors come to you specifically, they are already actively showing interest. Don’t you want that?

You can be live on line with a video blog

There are many places you can Livestream your thoughts to others. You can do this on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and more. The same applies as on social networks, these are not platforms that you can own and have ultimate control of your content, to do that you’ll need to host your videos on paid networks. YouTube is owned by Google and I doubt Google is going anywhere!

Being live in an online video is a great way to use your voice and connect with others. You’re there straight away, authentic because it is happening right now and able to interact with questions and comments as they come in. YouTube is a video hosting platform is incredibly powerful for your visibility online, especially if linked back to your website (ie. you post a link on your youtube video back to your website), and if you also embed those videos on your website as a blog post.

Who doesn’t love to see and know the person they potentially want to work with? So being in a video on your website will help your customers know you, potentially like you and grow to trust you to be able to do that thing they need. Whether that is a piece of jewellery they want making, their wedding photos taken, a custom stamp made for them, your skills as a life coach to get them over a career hurdle.

I can help you build your website, set your business foundations, brand your online presence and find your way of being consistent online. This is your chance to use your voice online .. speak up!

Ps. If you’re afraid of the tech and don’t know about websites. I wrote an ebook and a blog on website foundations, the basics, you can download the ebook for free.

If you are a small business and you’re asking your friends to send your page as a recommendation to ‘like’ to all their friends as a mass notification .. stop it.

STOP IT!

It will not help your business and could drastically harm it. So cut it out!

The best way to gain new likes on your page is to actually market (i.e. talk) to the people who want your products or services. If you do want your friends to help promote you, then ask them to write a post on their profile and talk about your business. That way the people who visit your page to like it will actually be the ones who are interested in what you do.

The only time page like numbers have a semblance of relevance is in a social media numbers press release in order to find sponsorship. Otherwise, don’t pay too much attention to it.

Most networks and social sphere’s make it feel like it’s a popularity contest because instinctively we think, big numbers mean good. However, I’d like to flip your thinking to focus on your ideal customer, not a random person.

The best kind of likes on a page are those who are genuinely interested in what you do, not the masses who are not! Otherwise facebook can’t tell is this just a fluff like because a friend is being kind, or is this a genuine like. So it looks at some other values.

It looks how well you engage with your viewers, do they like your post, comment and click through to see your website and at the pinnacle, do they buy your product or service? Facebook has a complex and always shifting algorithm of how to they show things within the general news feeds. We can complain, gamify and do all sorts to try to raise our visibility but realistically there are a few ways to improve your page being shown to those who are interested in what you do.

Share your key content into your business group, have people visit the post on the page and engage with it there. Ask questions, when someone replies, engage with them. Post at the times when there is the best engagement of your page, check your pages insights for when that is. Share images and funny memes, it doesn’t have to be 100% business .. a sense of humour goes a long way. Comment and interact with other businesses as your business page. It’s a long slow haul to improve your visibility, sowhat appears to be a quick fix of page likes isn’t a good fix in the long run.

I have a question for you: Is it better to have 1000 ‘likes’ on a page but only 10 people are ever going to engage with what you do. Or, is it better to have 100 people but those same 10 people regularly engage with you?

Percentage-wise, it’s far better to have fewer page likes but higher engagement and interactions. That way Facebook (or any other Facebook controlled social media *cough* Instagram *cough*) can see what is useful or interesting content, so it will show more of that.

So here’s why asking to invite hoards of random likes to your page is bad: you will have higher page likes, but your percentage of engagement will rapidly go down. Why would a random who only liked your page to be a friend and boost you by one like, why would that person then want to engage with you on your future business posts, they have no interest to do so? So your engagement numbers go down.

Don’t be swayed by page like numbers, chase engagement .. connect directly with those who interact with you.

This is how my old signature used to look:

___________________________________________
Photographer & Designer in York, UK
www.cathieheart.com
www.theheartsdesign.com
@cathieheart

Still, as email signatures go, it was better to have one consistent signature than no signature at all! So let’s help you make your Gmail signature better too.

First Phase – Signature Design

First .. you do need to know a little bit about HTML if you wish to make something look good within your signature beyond making text bold or larger. Not to fear I’ve got three designs for you to copy and edit your content into. All you need to do is copy the code into your notepad and edit the content to your details. If you have a business logo, place that into the img src code.

Clean & Simple

Grab the code for this design on CodePen: Clean & Simple

Professional Block

Grab the code for this design on CodePen: Professional Block

Split Colour

Grab the code for this design on CodePen: Split Colour Design

This colourful split design is my new email signature. I am so much happier with it as it clearly shows my two businesses, eventually I’m going to add social media logo and links in time but for now, this is so much better than the old style I shared at the beginning.

How to put your own logo in the signature.

Within the code is a part that looks like this:

<img src="https://www.cathieheart.com/BioPic-CathieHeart.png" alt="Cathie Heart" width="120" height="120">

This is the code that finds and put the logo into the signature. The src is the URL where the image is stored. Upload your image to your website or image sharing space like Flickr and grab the URL of where the image is and paste it into this code src between the two ” “. Change the width and height to match the size of your image, I would suggest no bigger than 200 pixels for a signature.

Second & Final Phase – Putting it into Gmail Signature.

This part I learned from this article here: Gmail Setup For Advanced Custom Signatures by Jaime Contreras, its a great article with snapshots. Go visit to follow the instructions with images, I’ve done a simple text prompt below. It’s seven simple steps and soon you’ll have a gorgeous new email signature.

Step 1 – Go to Gmail Settings via the Cog.
Step 2 – Scroll down to the signature block.
Step 3 – Right-click in the signature block, then click Inspect.
Step 4 – This should take you directly to the aria-label=”Signature” div, right-click and then click ‘Edit as HTML’.
Step 5 – Paste in your HTML code, click out of the HTML window.
Step 6 – Within the signature block in Gmail there is a blank paragraph right at the top, click on that space and add a new paragraph / line by hitting enter and then remove it by clicking delete.
Step 7 – Save and you’re done.

The reason for adding and then deleting a line in Step 6 is so that Gmail recognises the new HTML code you’ve added. Click save and you have a brand new boss signature to show off you in your business.

A great email signature is a subtle nod to being professional, something we subconsciously see and respect as a good quality in a business.

3. Social media gives you the ability to chat and be social with your audience and customers in exactly the place where they ‘hang out online’. The purpose here is to catch a persons attention and intrigue them.

2. People buy from people, so if you aren’t showing 75% business and say 25% personal, you are missing a chance to show who you are in your business. We love stories, so share yours about you within your business.

1. Your website is where all of your customers are best sent and this is where you *sprinkle* some of your marketing magic. They more of your website, click on your call to action button and buy from you or strike up a deeper conversation via your contact form. This could be your face when that dream client contacts you with an idea you’d LOVE to work with them on .. oooOOoo!

You just never know who loves what you do until you show them the way to get in touch with you. Sell that gorgeous flower arrangement, tell the story of having fun with your work space mates, all the plans and ideas that are burbling away. Have a professional website that works, where people can see what you and hire you to do their dream service.

Don’t trust that the right people will find you, go out there and shine .. be your best self, your best business and make an impact. Tell the world ‘Here I am and this is what I do, would you like me to make you something similar?’ and you’ll be on your way.

So get set, ready .. 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. go!