Dear Alex,
I own a professional services firm in town and we’re well established and growing the business year on year.
We do a lot for the local community – sponsor local sports teams, get involved in local charity events and turn up at so many community events
As a business we’ve grown over the past 8 years from just a team of 3 people to now employing over 20, we’ve won countless awards and we’ve got great online reviews
I just don’t feel we get the recognition for what we do
How can we change this?
Anon
Trust me when I say – I 100% feel your pain
At Altrincham HQ the business is just myself (with a fantastic team of service providers and freelancers that support what I do), but I totally get everything you’ve said above
Apart from the number of employees and growth on that side of things your story is virtually identical to ours
You might think that because we have 30,000+ social media followers we get a lot of support – since we started 10 years ago all the focus has been on the Save The High Street whilst we’ve had to fight for recognition for ourselves as a professional services firm.
Here’s what I would suggest
BLOGGING
Social Media is great in terms of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram – but the problem is: it’s temporary
If you’ve posted something a few days / weeks / months ago than people aren’t going to scroll through your feed looking through every single post
You want something with a little more stickiness like blogging and news sections on your website that show off all your success stories and community work
These stories won’t make up your whole blogging or content marketing plan, but they’ll play a part in it amongst the value added content where you answer the much needed questions for your audience
Because this community and local content you publish is focused on others you’ll often find those featured will share these posts for you and draw attention to your business
LINKEDIN EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY PLAN
60% of the UK workforce are on LinkedIn and they tend to be the ones in professional services firms
I love the fact that you’ve grown from 3 people to over 20 in just 8 years and your staff really are your powerhouse in terms of getting the word out there
Immediately after reading this blog I want you to spend 10 minutes looking at your employees LinkedIn Profiles and check 4 things
– Is it up to date (i.e do they say they work at your company)
– Have they shared any of the companies updates? (see their activity feed)
– Have they posted an update that offers insights into their work / industry / values?
– Have they interacted with others?
That is really skimming over what I mean by Employee Advocacy Plan, but will give you an idea of where employees are at in terms of LinkedIn at the moment
LinkedIn’s own research reveals that employee networks have, on average, 10 times as many connections as a company’s Company Page followers. Let’s say your company has 10,000 followers; that means collectively your employees’ networks have around 100,000.
If your own staff aren’t active on LinkedIn why should anyone outside the company care enough to spread the word
HOLD ORGANISATIONS ACCOUNTABLE
I’m going to ignore the local council here because they simply don’t understand business and are totally unresponsive
So think of all the membership organisations that you pay into – be that the Professional Body, Chamber Of Commerce, Networking Group, Business Improvement District
All of those organisations should be supporting your businesses journey and if it isn’t happened it’s down to one of 2 reasons
A) You’ve never let them know the great things you’re doing (or haven’t done often enough)
or
B) They’re simply not doing their job properly and just taking your money
If it’s the former you need to share your stories with these organisations and if it’s the latter then you vote with your feet when the membership or term is up for renewal
I hope those 3 things really help you get the recognition your deserve. As a professional services firm I know hard it is getting recognition, but by doing all of the above I’ve been able to build up my empire where hard work gets talked about
If you’re struggling with the above we offer Blogging Workshops and LinkedIn Workshops so that your team are fully on board
You’ve done amazingly well growing to where you are now – here’s to the next 20 employees
Alex
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Or Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
