{"rowid": 51, "title": "Blow Your Own Trumpet", "contents": "Even if your own trumpet\u2019s tiny and fell out of a Christmas cracker, blowing it isn\u2019t something that everyone\u2019s good at. Some people find selling themselves and what they do difficult. But, you know what? Boo hoo hoo. If you want people to buy something, the reality is you\u2019d better get good at selling, especially if that something is you.\nFor web professionals, the best place to tell potential business customers or possible employers about what you do is on your own website. You can write what you want and how you want, but that doesn\u2019t make knowing what to write any easier. As a matter of fact, writing for yourself often proves harder than writing for someone else.\nI spent this autumn thinking about what I wanted to say about  Stuff & Nonsense on the website we relaunched recently. While I did that, I spoke to other designers about how they struggled to write about their businesses.\nIf you struggle to write well, don\u2019t worry. You\u2019re not on your own. Here are five ways to hit the right notes when writing about yourself and your work.\nBe genuine about who you are\nI\u2019ve known plenty of talented people who run a successful business pretty much single-handed. Somehow they still feel awkward presenting themselves as individuals. They wonder whether describing themselves as a company will give them extra credibility. They especially agonise over using \u201cwe\u201d rather than \u201cI\u201d when describing what they do. These choices get harder when you\u2019re a one-man band trading as a limited company or LLC business entity.\nIf you mainly work alone, don\u2019t describe yourself as anything other than \u201cI\u201d. You might think that saying \u201cwe\u201d makes you appear larger and will give you a better chance of landing bigger and better work, but the moment a prospective client asks, \u201cHow many people are you?\u201d you\u2019ll have some uncomfortable explaining to do. This will distract them from talking about your work and derail your sales process. There\u2019s no need to be anything other than genuine about how you describe yourself. You should be proud to say \u201cI\u201d because working alone isn\u2019t something that many people have the ability, business acumen or talent to do.\nExplain what you actually do\nHow many people do precisely the same job as you? Hundreds? Thousands? The same goes for companies. If yours is a design studio, development team or UX consultancy, there are countless others saying exactly what you\u2019re saying about what you do. Simply stating that you code, design or \u2013 God help me \u2013 \u201chandcraft digital experiences\u201d isn\u2019t enough to make your business sound different from everyone else. Anyone can and usually does say that, but people buy more than deliverables. They buy something that\u2019s unique about you and your business.\nPotentially thousands of companies deliver code and designs the same way as Stuff & Nonsense, but our clients don\u2019t just buy page designs, prototypes and websites from us. They buy our taste for typography, colour and layout, summed up by our \u201cIt\u2019s the taste\u201d tagline and bowler hat tip to the PG Tips chimps. We hope that potential clients will understand what\u2019s unique about us. Think beyond your deliverables to what people actually buy, and sell the uniqueness of that.\nDescribe work in progress\nIt\u2019s sad that current design trends have made it almost impossible to tell one website from another. So many designers now demonstrate finished responsive website designs by pasting them onto iMac, MacBook, iPad and iPhone screens that their portfolios don\u2019t fare much better. Every designer brings their own experience, perspective and process to a project. In my experience, it\u2019s understanding those differences which forms a big part of how a prospective client makes a decision about who to work with. Don\u2019t simply show a prospective client the end result of a previous project; explain your process, the development of your thinking and even the wrong turns you took.\nTraditional case studies, like the one I\u2019ve just written about Stuff & Nonsense\u2019s work for WWF UK, can take a lot of time. That\u2019s probably why many portfolios get out of date very quickly. Designers make new work all the time, so there must be a better way to show more of it more often, to give prospective clients a clearer understanding of what we do. At Stuff & Nonsense our solution was to create a feed where we could post fragments of design work throughout a project. This also meant rewriting our Contract Killer to give us permission to publish work before someone signs it off.\nOutline a client\u2019s experience\nRecently a client took me to one side and offered some valuable advice. She told me that our website hadn\u2019t described anything about the experience she\u2019d had while working with us. She said that knowing more about how we work would\u2019ve helped her make her buying decision.\nWhen a client chooses your business, they\u2019re hoping for more than a successful outcome. They want their project to run smoothly. They want to feel that they made a correct decision when they chose you. If they work for an organisation, they\u2019ll want their good judgement to be recognised too. Our client didn\u2019t recognise her experience because we hadn\u2019t made our own website part of it. Remember, the challenge of creating a memorable user experience starts with selling to the people paying you for it.\nAddress your ideal client\nIt\u2019s important to understand that a portfolio\u2019s job isn\u2019t to document your work, it\u2019s to attract new work from clients you want. Make sure that work you show reflects the work you want, because what you include in your portfolio often leads to more of the same.\nWhen you\u2019re writing for your portfolio and elsewhere on your website, imagine that you\u2019re addressing your ideal client. Picture them sitting opposite and answer the questions they\u2019d ask as you would in conversation. Be direct, funny if that\u2019s appropriate and serious when it\u2019s not. If it helps, ask a friend to read the questions aloud and record what you say in response. This will help make what you write sound natural. I\u2019ve found this technique helps clients write copy too.\nToot your own horn\nSome people confuse expressing confidence in yourself and your work as boastfulness, but in a competitive world the reality is that if you are to succeed, you need to show confidence so that others can show their confidence in you. If you want people to hear you, pick up your trumpet and blow it.", "year": "2015", "author": "Andy Clarke", "author_slug": "andyclarke", "published": "2015-12-23T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/blow-your-own-trumpet/", "topic": "business"}