Networking gets a bad rap, because it’s often poorly facilitated. Creating a space for networking that is both results-driven and human is one of Sara Osterholzer’s superpowers.

Sara is an impact entrepreneur, startup mentor, and Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Sussex. She’s also the co-founder of the Good Business Club, a community for entrepreneurs who want to align people and planet with profit.

The Good Business framework

These are questions you can ask of your business to help evaluate the positive impact you’re having. For an in-depth look, take the Good Business Quiz.

• What impact are you having on the people who work for you, or in your business?
• Where are your clients in their ethical journey?
• What impact is your supply chain having?
• What is your offering? Is it more sustainable or ethical than the alternative?
• What is the impact you have on a local level, or within your community?
• What is the impact you’re having on the environment?

Some things to consider

• If your business can’t sustain itself, then it can’t have the impact you want.
• Doing good is a long-term aim. If it feels tricky in the short-term but your intentions are good, give yourself a break.
• Networking is a long game.
• A community is not a place (a Slack workspace or an email list or a Facebook group). It’s a collection of people who think differently and want many different things, but are aligned around a common purpose or shared interest.
• Welcoming and onboarding community members individually takes more time, but it’s likely to provide more value to them, and reduce churn.

Links

• Connect with Sara on LinkedIn
• The Good Business Club
• Atomic Habits, by James Clear
• Pledge 1%
• B1G1
• Nick Pomeroy’s appearance on Ear Brain Heart

It’s easier to market ethically when starting a business from scratch, but any business new or old can put ethics at the heart of what they do. That’s one of the key findings Chris and Jen discovered when they started helping businesses with ethical marketing.

Chris Thornhill and Jen Bayford formed Growth Animals to help business grow their bottom-line and their impact. But ethics isn’t something that can be added in later – it relies on a company culture that’s far easier to instil at the beginning than to change later.

That doesn’t mean that legacy businesses can’t take a new ethical stance, but they often face challenges around authenticity, and avoiding “greenhushing” (or the perception that a company might be greenwashing).

Some things to consider

• When considering social media channels, think about the value you can offer, not just the size of the megaphone.
• Do your values run the grain of your company, or are they just lacquered on?
• If the Internet were a country, it would be the seventh largest polluter in the world.
• Organisations should look at the good they’re already doing – or want to do – in practical terms, before seeking accreditation.
• Too much artificial scarcity erodes trust with the customer.
• Don’t wait until you’re squeaky-clean to start a campaign with ethics in mind.

Links

• Connect with Jen on LinkedIn
• Connect with Chris on LinkedIn
• Growth Animals
• The Progressive Leader’s Guide to Ethical Marketing (PDF)
• The Social Dilemma
• DFS advert from the 90s
• Atomic Habits, by James Clear
• Take the Growth Animals quiz

Everyone’s vying for our attention on LinkedIn. So how can you stand out without simply shouting louder?

For content marketing expert Kate Clarke, the key is writing authentically, as yourself, for exactly the type of person you want to reach. So rather than creating more content or chasing the algorithm, it’s about writing, recording, or live-streaming what occurs to you that can resonate with the people you want to work with.

Key takeaways

• Good writing starts by knowing the audience. Then bring in your values and your story.
• Start your content creation journey with video or a live stream. From that, you can generate a blog post, a podcast episode, and more.
• People buy from people they share values with.
• It’s important to set boundaries when speaking with an authentic voice, so you can let people in… but not too far in.
• Don’t be afraid of repeating yourself.
• Some level of automation or scheduling is necessary to help busy people get their messages out. But remember to ask yourself “is this content valuable?”
  • This can also be hugely beneficial if you have a biological cycle that impacts how visible you want to be.
• The best ways to bring people into the “know” stage of “know, like, trust” is to be visible. Buy ads (if that feels relevant), go to networking events, pitch to guest on podcasts, build partnerships.

George Kao’s three-step process for content development

1. Start with informal content – something you can record while walking the dog.
2. Take that piece and work it into something long-form, like a blog post or YouTube video.
3. Combine the pieces that have worked best into a course or a book.

Links

• Connect with Kate on LinkedIn
• Work with Kate
• Authentic Content Marketing: Build an Engaged Audience for Your Personal Brand Through Integrity & Generosity, by George Kao
• Answer the Public
• Focusmate