Useful Links
Some useful resources for you:
The Valuable Content Newsletter: monthly business marketing tips, tactics and valuable resources via email.
Click here to sign up or read back issues.
Blogs and websites well worth reading:
- Hinge Marketing’s blog: superb articles on marketing and branding for professional services firms @hingemarketing
- Charles H Green’s Trust Matters blog: the professional services guru and author of The Trusted Advisor, on the theme of trusted relationships in business @charleshgreen
- Jim’s Marketing Blog: Jargon free marketing sense from the brilliant Jim Connolly @jimconnolly
- Seth Godin’s blog: The most popular marketing blog in the world – for good reason @thisissethsblog
- Remarkable Communication: Sonia Simone has pink hair and dispenses beautifully written and down-to-earth advice on matters of small business marketing. We like her style. @soniasimone
- Mel Lester’s blog on all aspects of business development. He writes for architects and engineering firms but the advice he gives is absolutely relevant to all professional sectors. Worth subscribing to his newsletter – the best we have seen. Most definitely one of our valuable content heroes. @mellester
- www.ianbrodie.com: Thoughtful nuggets of intelligent advice for professional service firms on all aspects of sales and marketing strategy. @ianbrodie
- www.bryonythomas.com: watertight marketing advice, both strategic and tactical. @bryonythomas
- www.marketingdonut.com: Useful articles and resources on marketing and PR for small businesses.
- www.raintoday.com: Hub of articles, interviews, resources and regular webinars on how to grow your service business.
Books we have read, noted, re-read and recommend:
- ‘The New Rules of Marketing and PR’ – by David Meerman Scott
- Inbound Marketing – by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
- A Website That Works – Mark O’Brien of Newfangled
- Spiraling Up – by Lee Frederiksen and Aaron Taylor
- The Art of the Start – by Guy Kawasaki
- Making Change Happen – by Jane Northcote
- The Trusted Advisor - by Charles H. Green
Our Twitter Pick:
- For small business marketing: Bristol’s www.twitter.com/BryonyThomas and www.twitter.com/MarketingDonut; US brigade www.twitter.com/DuctTape, www.twitter.com/thisissethsblog,
- Professional services business development: www.twitter.com/CharlesHGreen, www.twitter.com/RainToday, www.twitter.com/IanBrodie, www.twitter.com/hingemarketing, www.twitter.com/principledsell
- Content marketing experts: www.twitter.com/JuntaJoe, www.twitter.com/Junta42, www.twitter.com/MickDickinson
- Examples of ‘real’ consultancy and professional service companies who use Twitter well: www.twitter.com/London_Law_Firm, www.twitter.com/RapidBI, www.twitter.com/SackmanAndCo, www.twitter.cm/relevantrisk
Consultancy companies getting their websites right:
- www.hingemarketing.com
- www.trustedadvisor.com
- www.recourses.com
- www.newfangled.com
- www.portfoliodirectors.co.uk
- www.clear-thought.co.uk
- www.helmgodfrey.com
- www.ianbrodie.com
- http://www.bizedge.biz
- www.relevant-risk.co.uk
Recommended, services and products:
- For design and development of valuable small business websites and blogs: www.iainclaridge.co.uk
- For business coaching: Heather Townsend at www.efficiencycoach.co.uk, Lee Duncan at www.leeduncan.com and Paul Simister at www.paulsimister.com
- Wordsmith Sharon Tanton for copywriting: www.sharontanton.co.uk
- For beautiful graphics, branding, photography and book illustration: www.lizzieeverard.co.uk
- For SEO: Adrian Knight at Performance Marketers: http://performancemarketers.co.uk
- David Stoch at Meerkat PR – the only person I recommed for B2B PR services: david@meerkatpr.co.uk www.twitter.com/DavidStoch
- 37signals’ products such as Highrise contact management tool and the brilliant Basecamp project management tool that we use to manage all complex client projects – simple but hugely effective: http://37signals.com
- Planning tool for your website projects: www.balsamiq.com
- The wonderful Thesis theme for Wordpress (that powers this blog)
Good causes we fully support:
- Surfers Against Sewage – www.surfersagainstsewage.com
- The National Autistic Society – www.nas.org.uk
- The RNLI – www.rnli.org.uk
We hope these links prove useful. Do get in touch if there is any other information that would help you: email Sonja at sonja@valuablecontent.co.uk or call 0117 9544023.



