In one conversation we had with a client in Finchley, he explained that he has actually found a place that he can go to write his blog articles without being disturbed by clients, customers or the telephone. Using his smartphone to write, he has found that the office toilet offers a perfect barrier to distraction and he has started churning out at least one blog a week. At first we were flushed to discover where our solid social media training was being utilised, but rather than wash our hands of this information, we coined the phrase “blog in the bog” but having thought about it, we actually thought we’d blog about the blog in the bog.

Now, we want to make it very clear that we are not writing this in a water closet and we’re using a laptop rather than a smartphone. However a blog is written, it’s the content that counts. If a social media client finds a way to write consistently help build content on their website and educate through social media, we’re all in favour – especially if he remains regular in his blogging activities.

Business blogs are a very important way to communicate with your customers, build your brand, promote your services and create content to use in your social media strategy. It also provides a boost for your SEO through creating fresh content for your website. As a business owner that’s good at what you do, writing blog articles is a great way to show off your expertise. Your passion for what you do is also likely to filter through to your writing. The best person to blog about their business is the business owner or manager, but it’s a task that can be fun to share with the whole company and provide even more content.

For more information about business blogging, social media management and improving your social media performance to enhance your brand and grow your business, talk to Barry Viniker Communications. We’re here to provide copywriting support, blogging advice for business, social media training and social media management. Email us or call 020 8371 7171 and we’ll discuss how we can create an effective social media plan for you and your company.

If you want to improve your company toilet facilities, please call the fantastic Stockline Limited – a BVC Client that provides refurbishment and development for businesses and hotels. You can visit their website here.

For us, the key to creating a great, easy to manage website for Family Funk was really getting to understand the band and what they produce on stage. We used a wordpress template that allowed us to recreate their incredible impact online, showcasing their performances and brilliant live performances. Our design team set about using imagery to create a modern look and feel whilst staying true to their retro roots. It was a really fun project and allowed the BVC team to use design and copywriting to promote a band with a growing reputation.

You can visit the band’s website here and see our case study about working with a great live corporate and wedding band here. You can also see what Amalia from the Family Funk Band says about working with us here.

Our set-up and basic training service has led us to creating some great relationships and provides a way for us to broaden our new agency’s brand. It also allows us to get to understand a business quickly, exploring the culture, product and service range and how the company operates. As we build up that knowledge, we’re able to offer advice on what to shout about, what to improve and suggest some additional marketing tips that we hope benefit our clients.

The results of our social media work are already reaping great rewards for clients and that’s something we’re really proud of. Kaleido Signs took their first inbound enquiry from twitter within 24 hours of setting up their account. Dynamic Self Defence have embraced social media quickly and are seeing higher levels of video views on YouTube than they ever dreamed of within a couple of weeks, and our BNI Chapter has already seen more than nine pieces of business won through social media.

You can find out more about Barry Viniker Communications’ social media services here or simply call us now on 020 8371 7171 to discuss how we can help promote your business effectively online.

Economic crisis, doom and gloom, double-dip recession, business breakdowns, everywhere you look things seem to be going from bad to worse. When you’re based in London, one of the world’s financial centres, with a team member in Greece, one of the world’s financial sob stories, it’s easy to get pessimistic. Earlier today the UK Chancellor George Osborne gave a speech saying: “Cuts are UK’s ‘rock of stability’”. Whilst that may be true for the national economy, for a single business there is far more room to manoeuvre and no reason why you can’t become a success story in troubled times.

What ever happened to good old fashioned optimism and creative thinking to get us through? Whilst businesses must review their operations and look for ways to save money and reduce financial leakage, a silver lining is there to be found in any gathering cloud. Improving and implementing a better marketing communications strategy will allow you to increase business and sail through the economic storm.

“Every tough time has a success story and in this economic wobble we intend to be it. To achieve such a bold objective, we have only one course of action: To ensure that our clients thrive, no matter how tough the economic situation becomes“.
Barry Viniker

When most businesses have to make cuts, it’s usually marketing that gets the chop first. The most important message we can deliver right now is that investing in marketing rather than cutting your marketing budget will be the key to your business survival, continuity and growth.

Cutting back on marketing and advertising in tough times is one way to shout more quietly than your competition and ensure that your company gets credit crunched. Rather than making cuts, making changes to your business practices and improving your marketing performance can help you find a stronger voice and shout louder as others choke under pressure. With business folding at the rate of knots in some areas, it’s important to keep hold your customers and catch those leaving your competitors.

How can you do this effectively?

Improve your business support network, find ways to cut costs whilst improving value and get more power for your pound. Before you make cuts to the services you receive, see if you can find an alternative supplier that can provide more for your money and help you grow rather than try to tread water.

Our Blueprint for success: Effective Marketing 100%

At Barry Viniker Communications, we really do believe that the future is bright because we have the marketing skills and business know-how to keep our clients on a successful course. We can do this by providing exceptional customer service and going the extra mile. We enjoy a good challenge and we celebrate when we achieve winning results.

“Taking risks in a time of uncertainty can be dangerous, but no more so than risking losing your customers to competitors. Cuts can be every bit as dangerous“ .
Barry Viniker

As a small integrated marketing agency in Finchley, North London, we are able to keep our costs lower than are local competition. We drive the company forward by carefully selecting the best new talent, keeping hold of great skills and experience within the team and ensuring that we stay hungry by working with clients that share our own drive and ambition.

Rather than cut back on services or staff, we’ve ditched the traditional office and the rental and service costs that come with one. Instead, we work remotely, making full use of computer technology and the power of the internet to work effectively, maintain an incredible team of individuals without geographic limitation. It’s just one way that we can promise to save you money, offer the best service and provide more power for your pound.

Is it time for you to work with an agency that can make your marketing more affordable, more striking, more effective and more likely to succeed?

Exploit our pool of marketing knowledge and utilise our core competencies in brand management, design, copywriting, strategy, online marketing and social media to create integrated campaigns at a fraction of the cost you might expect to pay from other marketing agencies.

With us, we hope you’ll find the best people to achieve your marketing objectives and deliver better results. We will work tirelessly to help you rise out of the current economic climate stronger than ever.

Make the change today, give Barry Viniker Communications a call and we’ll prove how we can help you.

The Russell Automotive Group have awarded their social media account to Barry Viniker Communications to manage on an ongoing bases. The group run two successful garage brands, including National award winning Russell Automotive Centre – London’s Leading independent Audi, Volkswagen, Seat & Skoda specialist and Garage Express, servicing all car and van models.

Barry Viniker said “We’re really pleased to be working with Jane Russell and her two fantastic garages. They’ve done a bit of a Mary Portas in their industry and redefined what you should expect from a car service provider. It almost a shock not to see several day old newspapers, torn second hand office chairs and dirt on everything you touch. Russell Automotive Centre is more like a car showroom, it’s bright, clean, welcoming and everything about the company reflects that image”.

“They’re a great company with a forward thinking attitude and they have the awards to prove it. Their take on social media is positive, unlike many garages, and we look forward to developing a strategy that we begun on a trial basis. To have the ongoing social media account is testament to our social media ability and the Russell Automotive Group’s culture of going the extra mile and providing great service”.

Of course, we couldn’t publish this company news without recommending that you follow Russell Automotive Centre – @RACLondon and Garage Express @Garage_Express on twitter as well as Facebook and Youtube.

Russell Automotive Centre

Garage Express

We have been asked to undertake a marketing audit and create a marketing plan that takes into account the changing nature of the United Kingdom economy and enables Mary B to strengthen their brand and continue to grow in times of uncertainty in the UK housing market and property investment sector.

Barry Viniker said: “We’re Delighted to work with such a reputable interior Design company. Mary B have a great reputation in the North London area and have created some real magic for home owners and investors. The care they put into projects literally changes lives for those who benefit from their designs. Clearly, there is a synergy between our companies and I look forward to creating great things together”.

Beautiful Lounge Interior Design by Mary B Professional Living

Here at BVC, we are investing time and effort in maintaining our company blog. We believe that maintaining a quality company blog should be a key part of a company’s marketing mix because it adds value to your brand. A blog  provides many benefits in terms of communicating with customers, attracting new customers, developing your corporate brand and increasing your online presence.

As BVC grows, we’ll be publishing information that we hope will help you develop your business and improve your marketing, let you know about our services, going on inside the company and develop a more personal relationship with you, whether you’re a current client, a future client or someone that simply enjoys visiting our website and finding useful hints and tips to implement wherever you are.

What is a business blog?

A business blog is a tool that your company should use to communicate with customers, potential customers in your target market, employees and other stakeholders. Business blogs are continually increasing in importance and provide regular fresh content for your website, allowing you to improve your search engine rankings and social media output.

Blogs began as an online diary for people to publish, allowing them to share thoughts, interests and activities with friends and meet like-minded people. With the explosion of social media, business began to invest in blogs and now business blogs play a major role in marketing activity for small businesses through to multi-national companies. It’s important that if you run a business or mange the marketing for a company, you understand the corporate blog and how to use it to benefit your business.

Every time you post an article on your blog, it creates a new page for customers and potential customers to find, read and get to know your company. Each article is effectively a new page for your website and you can drive visitors to it by posting links on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked In. The more blog posts you publish, the more individual pages you can drive people to.

How does a blog benefit your business?

Keep your customers informed

You can use your blog to let customers know about new stock in your shop, or new services that your company provides. Your blog works as an additional online advertising tool for your business.

Get the message out quickly

If your website is managed externally and you need to ask a web design company to update your website, using your blog allows you to get your message out to customers quickly and directly. Blogs are easy to update, give you more control over your online communications.

Spread the word

Maintaining a well written and regularly updated blog will benefit your company’s online presence greatly. If your blog is held within your website, it creates regular new content for search engines to register, boosting your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and helping move you up the search engine listings. It also provides regular new content to promote through social media. You can post links to the blog article easily through your Facebook business page (as well as your personal account if you mix business with pleasure), your twitter account and your Linked In profile. For more information about getting Social Media working for your business, click here.

Develop your brand

The more informative information you put on your website, the more visitors will see your expertise and want to come to you. Whether you provide a professional service or run a retail operation, blogging will help you to increase customer loyalty, win new customers and increase the power of your brand through increased visibility and more regular contact with customers and your target market.

More information

For more information about how to get your business blogging email info@barryviniker.com and we’ll be happy to talk to you about adding another string to your online marketing bow.

“Smaller companies in every corner of the UK will take heart from the Chancellor’s moves to cut fuel duty, maintain business rate reliefs for an additional year, and to exempt businesses with fewer than ten employees from new regulations….We have consistently pushed hard for growth in every region and nation of the UK. We warmly welcome the re-introduction of Enterprise Zones in England, and the Government’s decision to reward those who invest in new businesses across the UK, for example through the doubling of Entrepreneurs’ Relief.”

The big question now is how businesses can make the most out of the relief brought by the budget. Every business should be striving to increase profit and get maximum value for money out of business operations and activity.

One of the easiest ways is to ensure that they are marketing themselves effectively and that customers understand the benefits of using their services.

• Does your website attract the customers that you want?
• Do customers understand what you offer them?
• Do customers understand why you are better than the competition?
• Do customers know why they should come to you?
• Do new customers come to you?

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, then you can improve your business. Whether it is simply by improving your messaging, strengthening your brand or overhauling your marketing plan, Barry Viniker Communications can help.

For a free, no obligation, informative discussion about how you can improve your business, call us today. We’ll see what we can do to help you increase your market share, develop customer loyalty and get more customers to come to you.