A whole new layer of trust is needed in business now.
In this post, you’ll find out how you can use your website to build trust and develop a workflow.
I’ll give you three places in your workday to find words to put on your website regularly, and other than your time it is free.
For people to come to your coworking or shared workspace, they need to see that you have COVID preventive measures in place and that you will know what to do if anything else happens.
But no one knows what is going to happen, not even Sarah Cooper.
The Cost of Trust
Steve R Covey has written a lot about trust, and in his book The Speed Of Trust, he gives the framework of when Trust is High, Speed is High, and Cost is Low.
When COVID hit the workspace industry, businesses we know with a close relationship with their members still suffered, but people rallied around to help them.
High Trust
The excellent relationships that owners and community managers had with members meant that open discussions about how people could pay a reduced membership and what the workspace could do to help in return made more sense.
Low Trust
But other more impersonal spaces had people cancel, and members even took legal action to challenge charges on reduced facilities.
Why You Need To Act Now
So few people in the coworking industry in the U.K. make proper posts for their website when the market is open for the taking.
I look at coworking space websites every day all around the world and only a few have COVID opening information on, even less have regular content on them.
There is a coworking boom about to happen, people are sick of being alone at home and very few people in the coworking industry have the right information on their website – EVEN if they have the right equipment and measures in place.
Does your website build trust?
The more decent words you have on your website, the more trust you will build.
When you have adverts or crappy content on your website, it will kill that trust.
Pro tip: It is harder to get people to ‘book a tour’ so change ‘book a tour’ on your website to ‘book a call’ this will be the ‘first contact’ – read on for more.
People research more and more online before they make a purchase and words on your website help you build trust with both search engines AND with human beings.
So spunking £100’s every month on SEO when you are not adding new content to your website is burning money with no purpose.
Read: ‘How to make $10 Million from one blog post’ here.
People are happy to read between 50 and 100 pages of content before they make a significant purchase.
So for a coworking space, a potential member would need to have more to read than ‘about me’ or ‘book a tour’ or some headline about what you think/wish your space is all about.
Three places to find words for your website
A lot of conversations about article writing, blogging or whatever you want to call the act of putting words on your website, go like this:
I don’t have time! I’m busy…..er.
How will it fit into my sales process?
What do I write about? – so I’ll think about it.
I have not written since school, how can I start now?
Start here now
Look at your workday to find articles you are ‘accidentally already writing’ and then publish them as a blog post. Here is where you could look.
1. In social media posts
I’ll see someone in a freelance, coworking or marketing forum, slack channel, WhatsApp or social media and I’ll write and post an answer.
On my phone.
Standing in my kitchen.
While cooking.
When I’m alive, I copy and paste the answer onto my website and publish it. (Of course, I edit it first.)
Pro tip: If you make content for your website, people have something to share for you on social media, no one is going to share your front page.
2. Emails:
You will have people emailing you from your workspace and also people emailing in to ask you.
“is it ok to have dogs.”
“Can I bring my bike.”
“Are there coffee shops nearby?’
“Is there a helicopter pad near you?”
The questions about COVID are what you can write about now, like right now.
If you have been looking for somewhere to start – THIS IS THE PLACE.
Stop reading or listening to this post, grab something to write with, a pen or the notes app on your phone and write:
‘The top five COVID questions we get asked here at ‘Acme Coworking.’
Make this into a FAQ page for your website.
Also, make this into a blog post, add a link to your email signature.
Then send people the link to the post – instead of writing out the same thing every time.
Most emails like Google and Office 365 and CRM’s have a feature where you can add quick-to-use templates.
3. What people ask you in the kitchen or on calls.
I am always listening hard for what people have problems with, like really hard.
More sex or more leads?
I could send a survey and ask people what do they want, and for the fifteen plus years I’ve been in marketing people ALWAYS say ‘more leads.’
Everyone wants more leads – it is like human beings saying I want more sex.
But when you dig deeper, they want connection, companionship, to be understood, empathy and ice cream.
Does your website copy pass the mum test?
One of the best books I’ve ever come across in my life is ‘The Mum Test‘ which goes into more in-depth detail about this.
Rob Fitzpatrick opens the book by asking his mother if she’d like an app to see recipes on her iPad.
His mother says yes, but when he dives more in-depth about money, where she gets recipes now and how she keeps them he realizes that this is not a ‘real yes’ but a ‘nice yes’.
Watch this video to see this part of ‘The Mum Test’ in action.
Why you need a workflow for you writing
Over the years talking with hundreds of people about marketing, I’ve discovered their main problem (and mine, by the way) is not ‘I don’t know what to write about’ it is about workflow and keeping consistency.
As soon as you get a workflow, you’ll start to build consistency, and you’ll become a content machine.
Spend 15 minutes looking at your workflow.
For example:
You find a question – do you add it to a list or make a google doc?
What do you do next?
When will you write it?
How will you post it online?
Will you make an image?
When will you post it?
What links and people will you add?
What is the call to action? – Book a call, tour or join an email newsletter?
How I do it
I make a new page in Grammarly – and then add the link to that page to Nifty.
Trust me, this is not the best way of doing it, but it is the one that works for me.
I always start writing in Grammarly, especially now Grammarly works on iPad – I KNOW!
Wait!
Did you know the full version of Grammarly works on an iPad?
OMG Yes!
I know!
How long does it take to build a workflow?
It takes time and effort to make a workflow for yourself when you design your workflow you own it, and it works like magic.
In 2010 Scott Belsky, Chief Product Officer at Adobe, researched 100’s of creative people’s workflows and discovered the people that made their own, did best.
Scott wrote about it in Making Ideas Happen here.
But right now, you may be putting more effort into your selfie angle for Instagram than how to get words on your website.
For around four years, I’ve been a member of a marketing community where we follow a 90 Day Challenge of publishing a post, podcast or video once a week for 90 Days.
My mate Col Gray from Pixels Ink in Scotland started a YouTube channel four years ago.
He used the 90 Day Challenge to grow his channel to over 23k subscribers at the time of this post.
Build your workflow with others
Col is one of many people I’m on this journey with, grinding it out every fu@k!ng week. The more we post, the less time it takes.
We’re building our businesses, getting better and showing people what we are about – you know – building trust.
Here is a shortlist of my peers active in the challenge in July 2020.
Debbie: What is greenwashing? (and how to avoid it)
Aidan: Top 6 martial arts schools in Slough
Dan: Good news – positive news through Coronavirus
Louise: How to build a network on LinkedIn that you want to connect with
Kimberly: Facebook Live stream
Ramin: Is another stock market crash coming?
Dave: Start a virtual book club
Murray: Why am I sore after a workout?
Adanna: Everything you need to know about bounce back loans
Why are Ann Handley, Sonia Thompson, Josh Bernoff and Pamela Wilson not on this list?
They are not here because they are professional writers.
The people in this list are regular human beings with a business like you and me.
If they can do it, so can you!
And that is my point; you can do it too – we all started somewhere, and all of us have been through a website and a confidence shit storm to get here.
People coming to your coworking space are looking for evidence of trust, and if you talk about people and places too far away from where they are, it will not make sense, so you need to be relatable.
For example: don’t run a coworking space in Ilford, Redbridge and talk about buying your first Lamborghini – well maybe.
Be Relatable: Answer People’s Questions.
So when you answer peoples questions, you already know what you are going to write, and they get something they want from you.
When I choose a workspace, I want to know I’ll be with people who I can connect with, learn from and are on a similar frequency.
I don’t want to be near a bunch of deranged 10x fanboys and girls hanging off every word in the next episode of Gary V’s podcast with Seth Godin.
(I mean that would have been fine for me a decade ago…. but now?)
What is on your website has to be relatable, I mean so relatable people think you are in their head.
Ok, maybe that is a bit creepy.
Stay with me here, In this 1:56 second clip from Ellen, she describes being relatable, and the bathmat has it.
Clearly, Ellen is taking the piss out of people who think they are relatable when they are not; they are out of touch.
Ten tips for freelancers in coworking spaces
But a lot of the content thinks it is relatable, but it is bland crap content that is same predictable bollox.
“12 coolest coworking spaces in London” might show up in search, but who has the budget to go there now?
“10 tips for freelancers” – we have to read the same ten tips everywhere.
“10 project tools for freelancers” – there are only so many times we can read about Trello, Asana and Monday on a coworking space website.
Often the people writing those posts don’t believe in the tools they are using anyway, and we know it.
They ‘outsource their success’ to these tools and are attempting to outsource their success to ‘the same as everyone else’ blog post.
Do you think freelancers are coming to your workspace website to find out what project tool to use at this stage of their career?
You have to work harder with the words on your website.
When you write something very industry-specific to who you’d like in your space, you will get somewhere.
If your space has:
Musicians, D.J.’s and singers in – write about that, not Simon Sinek TED talk.
(Honestly, every coworking space in the world has posted that at some point.)
Tech for good – write about keyboard shortcuts for programmers, Jira and pizza – not ‘Marie Forleo favourite green juice.’
Designers and Architects – write about Carlos Moreno and The Feminist City, not your morning routine and meditation.
Project Managers – write about Jeff Sutherland’s book – Scrum – The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time.
Not Todoist vs Trello – they will be way past that, besides VERY few articles go into depth, so after a while, they are not useful.
For example, I’ve read 1000’s of SEO articles over the years – but I ALWAYS remember the Skyscraper Post by Brian Dean from 2016.
The best thing you can work on is Coworking Space near me because of COVID the local boom is about to happen.
Coworking Space near me – the ‘Local Boom.’
There is a boom of local coworking spaces, flexible workspaces (or whatever you want to call them) happening.
This week our guest on the Coworking Values Podcast was David Brown from Good Space in Queens Park London.
David modelled his new coworking space on Carlos Moreno’s 15-minute city.
Since David opened a month ago, he has attracted A LOT of new members.
Most interestingly he focused his marketing on the one-mile radius around his building, not by spunking £800 an SEO guru and £800 Linkedin adverts a month.
15 minute City with David Brown from Good Space:
Listen online here.
Hear it on Spotify here.
Catch it on Apple here.
Local Boom side note — We’re ready.
There is a rapid increase in requests for virtual offices, and we opened our Cowork.tools compliance for coworking spaces with Know-Your-Customer (KYC).
And my mate Hector is about to have his moment with Hyperlocal Coworking Perks here.
How workflow and trust works at Engaging People
Late last year I reconnected with my mates Gina and Bobby Romero. We knew each other in London a decade ago.
Nowadays, Bobby and Gina run a very purposeful V.A. company called Connected Women – that champions women.
I had a call with Gina, and she helped me find gaps in my workflow that I did not know how to solve.
These days I work with two part-time V.A.’s, Z and Venice. We work together here on engagingpeople.wpengine.com, Cowork.Tools, #Saveourlocalcoworking, London Coworking Assembly and online events like Coworking Symposium.
We use all these WordPress tools here.
Our Workflow and Our Trust
Venice, Z and I have all read and follow:
The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
Business Made Simple University and of course, the 90 Day Challenge – it quickly gave us a common framework.
Because I know I’m obsessive and have a few personality disorders brewing, with that I made a point of following Jeff’s The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time book into practice, the main message is that to let people get on with it.
How I learned to Trust
The most straightforward way to do this was to invite Venice and Z to do what they think best and come back, and we’ll tweak together.
The first time, I closed my eyes and held my breath to see what would happen.
Had I wasted my money?
I’d been stung before with V.A.’s and job platforms!
How would I deal with it?
But I know how much faster I can work when I can ‘proceed until apprehended’ and how it hurts my head trying to work out what people want, especially from their crap instructions.
I trusted Venice, Z and channelled Jeff and went with it.
Every time, Venice and Z’s work comes back way beyond what I even had in mind in the first place. Look at all the websites we run.
During COVID, we learned to move at a fast, yet steady pace, and can recover if we fall over – our workflow is our speed of trust.
Be first to hear about building your workflow going and your coworking business from a lot of the people mentioned in this post.
Join the launch list for ‘How To Market Your Coworking Space The Simple Way HERE.
*When I link to products and services I often get a commission at no extra cost to you.
I only ever link to things I use, trust and 100% recommend.
