S3: E2: B2B Blogging Success

Transcript

Lucy Mowatt: Hi Catherine, welcome to the podcast.

Catherine France: Hi, it is lovely to be here.

Lucy Mowatt: It’s great to have you on the show. We’ve known each other for just over a year, I think it is now and it’s really great to have the opportunity to talk to you about all things blogging so very much looking forward to this podcast. And before we get into the real meat of the show, could you introduce yourself a bit more about your experience as a copywriter?

Catherine France: Yes, of course. So my name is Catherine France. I’m an insurance copywriter. and I spent 20 years in UK commercial insurance, which, if I say it fast, doesn’t sound that long, working for regional and national brokers. So I’ve got a background in lots of different areas of insurance, claims, operations, compliance, account managing, all sorts of things. I’ve used that to kind of build my copywriting business, I suppose, so I recognised that there were lots of brokers out there that want to be writing blogs or content. They’ve got all the information in their brains, but they didn’t necessarily have the time or capacity, they’re very busy people, to get that out of their heads and onto paper. So that’s what I do for them.

Lucy Mowatt: There’s a very natural progression. I think from the sounds of it, taking your expertise in one area and transplanting it to a different discipline.

Catherine France: Yeah, it did. I never sort of saw myself as being self-employed. That almost came about by accident after I did some consultancy work for an insurance broker client. I kind of found myself in that self-employed position and joined lots of other groups of self-employed people and it became quite apparent quite quickly that a lot of those people either didn’t have any insurance or didn’t know what to buy, so I started writing blogs for them. They probably didn’t even know that at the time kind of explaining different types of insurance to you. And that’s when a couple of past colleagues sort of picked up on what I was writing on LinkedIn and said ‘Could you write some of that stuff for us?’ And I was like, ‘yeah, okay’. and that’s kind of how it evolved. It’s what I do and I love what I do, but it just feels like it almost came about through coincidences, whatever you want to call it. But yeah it was quite an experience to go through.

Lucy Mowatt: it’s quite a leap but also quite natural that you’ve moved in that direction.

Catherine France: It is. Yeah, I think it’s completely different from being, in an employed marketing role and that also allows me to shape the work I do and who I work with as well. So I’ve got a nice variety of different clients that want me to write different things for them, whether that’s blogs or web copy or social media posts, whatever that might be. But yeah, it’s good fun.

Lucy Mowatt: So we’re sort of focusing on the more blogging side of things today. In the context of more B2B marketing and insurance marketing. Why do you think blogging plays such an important part in the overall marketing strategy?

Catherine France: I think, in part, it’s a really effective mechanism for reaching out to your target audience and engaging with people. And I think lots of people still read blog content. Either they’re aware they do or they’re not because actually what they’re Googling is ‘do plumbers need public liability insurance?’, or all these questions that we put into Google, and actually that information it’s throwing back out at us is generally articles and blog posts.

I mean, I know there’s the avoiding the sort of paid sponsored stuff but a lot of that is content and that’s what we’re absorbing and I think that gives businesses that want to blog a really good way to establish their brand voice and trust and educate their buyers. I think it kind of creates the opportunity to get people from that point of ‘I’m not quite sure what I need.’ To give them enough information that makes them feel empowered to do the next thing, whether that’s pick up the phone or fill in a form or whatever. I think it’s a really important part of most businesses’ marketing strategy.

Lucy Mowatt: But do you think there’s a fundamental difference between B2C content and B2B content and blogging? Do you think there are particular differences?

Catherine France: I think it’s not whether you are B2B and B2C but if you’re a service or a product-based business. My clients are businesses and their clients could be individuals or businesses so it’s a bit of a grey area but I think there’s a difference where you’re wanting the client to make an immediate purchase. And I think that’s probably where the difference is because with the content I’m writing, it’s a much longer buy. The journey between somebody hitting the website and then trusting you to buy insurance from you is probably longer and you’re reliant on things like renewal date and all those kinds of things, so it’s not like ‘I’ve just seen something on Instagram. I want to buy that’, click, I’ve bought it, it’s on its way to me. It’s not quite as simple as that. I mean, we’d love to think we hit all those clients at that right moment. But it’s slightly different than that. I think that makes sense.

Lucy Mowatt: Yeah, it makes a really interesting point because I always say there is no difference between B2B and B2C content a lot of the time because a business isn’t reading an article. A person at that business is reading an article.

That’s a really interesting point about the lead time from someone landing on the website through to actually coming to convert and become a client. It can be massive in a B2B setting so blogging can not only get people to the website and get them to initially find out about the brand, but fill the gaps on that journey and have different touch points throughout the marketing and conversion journey.

Catherine France: And I think that must be right. It has got to be relevant to thing things other than insurance, if you’re making a big purchase or something you need to research on. If you’ve got somebody, like you said, filling that gap and building the trust and giving you really useful information, it helps you make a decision. I think It’s not blogging for blogging’s sake, so to speak.

Lucy Mowatt: I think you sort of said at the beginning when you were just sort of answering questions, which is fantastic because your audience clearly wants the answers to this, but to think about that content strategy and behind it and what that content’s doing. How would you typically approach developing a content strategy for a business?

Catherine France: What I tend to do with clients, is we tend to sort of have two groups of content if we’re starting out from scratch. I did have clever names for them, but I can’t remember what they were, and we’ll have business information and then almost like product information. So in the business information, it might be what the business story is what they stand for what they don’t stand for who their ideal clients are. It might be team profiles. It’s all that good stuff about what that business is or really about.

Then there’s the product stuff: what’s public liability? Why do I need cyber? What’s professional Indemnity? How do I not get sued? What do I do about social? AI? All those kinds of core questions. And we really just build that stuff out from the questions they get asked by their clients. And it’s like most people can think of three things a client asks them all the time. And so we kind of build it out from that and make it as straightforward as possible. Really I suppose.

Lucy Mowatt: How do you typically get buy in from those internal stakeholders? So you’re sort of saying, look at getting those questions. Is there a process that you tend to go through to gather that information and find out those topics?

Catherine France: And yeah, most of it is really from talking to them because most of my clients have so much knowledge in the insurance world. They kind of do it day in, day out.

It’s actually kind of going back to what are the basics? And then building out from that because you could write a post on a particular topic, in varying levels of detail. So you might do it for an solopreneur, like me, about the types of liability insurance I need, which could be very different from what a multinational petrochemicals firm needs to know about public liability insurance. So I suppose it’s really just taking the time to chip away and get under the skin of what they know. What their specialisms are?

And also that could be areas where they’ve identified and they want to grow. Everyone’s talking about cyber insurance and everyone’s talking about AI and how that might impact on all sorts of different things (which is a whole different podcast probably!) but I’m quite naturally nosy. So I’m quite good at asking them the kinds of questions they asked and from my experience. I can sort of tease out the stuff about specialisms and different client sectors. Some of it might come from, news topics. We’ve done quite a lot about lithium batteries exploding on microscooters and things like that. And the implications of those so yeah, it’s kind of a blend I suppose.

Lucy Mowatt: I think the for marketers in-house or maybe agency side, building those relationships and going and asking lots of questions [is important]. I often say that if you’re struggling for blog content go to speak to your customer service teams and ask them lots of questions about what they’re doing what they’re seeing what they’re being asked.

Catherine France: And it could be something that’s happened to them in their working day or something that’s happened in their career; it could be all sorts of different things. Sometimes they’re almost slightly more interesting, this sort of human story side of it than actually the technical stuff. And insurance isn’t very exciting so you do have to work a bit harder to bring it to life and use examples.

I really like talking to the claims people because they tend to be the ones who have seen… they’ve been there when the client really needed them and they’ll have heaps of stories and situations and scenarios that you can draw inspiration from so that’s always an interesting conversation.

Lucy Mowatt: Yeah, and I suppose looking at the audience… that is what you’re buying insurance for. It’s knowing that there’s going to be someone there to help you if it goes wrong. So thinking about what the audience wants is how can we demonstrate our claims expertise in blogs and that kind of stuff.

Catherine France: Yeah, definitely and I’ve done everything from introducing the team to talking through what happens through a motor claim and what happens if you’re not happy, or all sorts of different things because it’s very easy for insurance brokers to spend loads of money on a really great website (this is like a broad sweeping statement), which will say we do everything from oil rigs and whatever it is. And then they’ll have one tiny little tab on their website that says ‘claims’ and it’s like ‘ring this number’. There’s a huge opportunity to just engage more in, like you said, why people buy insurance. What support they can expect? What is the process likely to feel like? Why does it take so long for a flood claim to be from flood to final settlement? All those kinds of things.

And I think sometimes we get scared that we’re gonna give clients the wrong information or we’re working in a regulatory environment. And I completely get that. But I don’t think we can use that as an excuse not to tackle some of these subjects, which I think we can do really well and not break any rules or anything like that.

There’s a huge opportunity, I think, to do better at telling everybody all the good stuff that happens in insurance because it tends to be particularly [bad] in the press. We get bashed over the head because we didn’t pay out on a travel claim because the person didn’t pick the box or whatever. We don’t necessarily cover ourselves in glory either. I think there’s a lot to do about showing the good stuff.

Lucy Mowatt: No, I mean I do agree. I think it’s about showing rather than just telling. Anyone can say that they’re brilliant at claims, for instance. But actually, how do you demonstrate and show people what they can expect the claims experience to be like? Actually, some of that behind-the-scenes content, speaking with your teams speaking with clients is the perfect way to demonstrate that.

Catherine France: Yeah, and I think if you’re a broker that doesn’t have an in-house claims team, I don’t think the client quite understands their responsibility. In the event of a claim, to prepare all the documentation. And when you’re adding that to what could be a really stressful and emotional situation for the client, then that’s just one more thing. You just don’t need it. So if you’re doing the opposite of that, you’ve got a really good claims team, then you’ve got every opportunity to talk about it.

Lucy Mowatt: You just touched on something that I just want to come back to: you said behind-the-scenes content performs… that people content is the sort of format that generates the most engagement or do other types of content perform well for B2B?

Catherine France: I think it works well because generally people, like me, are nosy. They like to see behind the scenes. They like to see the real-life stuff. What goes on in the office and those things? Do I use that so much in blog content? I mean we talk about, the teams and the processes and things like that, but I think that almost works better in social media. I think when you’ve got images and things certainly, from my own experience, that content way outperforms anything else.

Lucy Mowatt: It really does in my experience, too.

Catherine France: You can spend hours crafting the perfect social media post and then you post a picture of your cat doing something daft and that’s the one that gets all the engagement.

Lucy Mowatt: Internet loves a cat. It’s frustrating.

Catherine France: It is yes, but yeah. I think, sometimes, that when you’re scrolling through social media, things stop you scrolling, you’ll have a read. I think that that’s got to be a good thing. Hasn’t it?

Lucy Mowatt: Absolutely. Yeah, if you get a little bit of engagement, it’s good for the algorithms.

We briefly touched on SEO and search engine content. We’ve had at levelled at us that maybe content is a bit too SEO and aimed it at Google. How do you find that balance? And how important is SEO content with your clients?

Catherine France: I think it’s always something you’ve got in the back of your mind. It’s as if there’s a balance between readability, delivering value and keeping it relevant. Not stuffing keywords into there. My approach to SEO is probably quite basic and self-taught. I have applied it to my website. It’s worked quite well for me. So I’ve done it again for clients. And it’s basic things like just checking you’re using headings, you’re making use of your meta descriptions, and the tip I got, which I was like, ‘wow, we never thought of that’ was actually to name images with the title of your blog post and things like that. Google kind of ranks those as well.

I think it’s just like that there’s basic things that I do. I think with the titles of blog posts, it’s a bit Ronseal in the approach. I don’t try and be too kind of… There’s no sort of mystery about what the blog’s about, I suppose. I don’t think that does anyone anything.

They tend to be fairly clear and the headings. There tend to be things like questions or statements to break up the text because a lot of people will skim, if they’re anything like me, down to the bit that they really want to read. It’s probably not technical, and apologies to all SEO experts who happen to be listening. Please send your tips.

Lucy Mowatt: Again, it’s a balance. I think okay, it’s fine, aim to get it ranking in Google search results. But you’re writing for a human at the end of the day. Write a great article. Write a great blog for a human.

Catherine France: Because quality will always be better than just writing something for SEO. If your strategy is purely to get onto your website or onto a particular landing page then I suppose the SEO becomes more important. And I have had clients in the past that have written purely for SEO.

And that’s absolutely fine. But I think, more generally, it’s the same approach you outlined. That you’re writing for a human and at the end of the day you want the person that reads it to go ‘Okay. I’ve learned something. That was really useful. Now I know what to do?’

Lucy Mowatt: Thinking about insurance and more technical subject areas. How do you avoid falling into that jargon trap?

Catherine France: Yes, it’s very good one because we like a three-letter acronym in the insurance world. Alot of it is explaining different terms. Frequently asked questions documents, that kind of stuff, because you’ve got to read it and be able to understand it. A lot of that comes back down to the editing as well. If I didn’t know anything about insurance, would that make sense? And just trying to use analogies or real-life examples, I think is particularly useful. And that’s not always easy. But at least I’ve got clients that can help and make sure that they’re completely accurate.

Lucy Mowatt: It is quite hard when you’re very close to a subject. You sometimes forget the level of experience or understanding of your expertise area. It can be easy to forget if you’re writing a blog and you want to share everything and show how experienced you are while avoiding that technical jargon.

Catherine France: You have to explain it at a level so that they’re getting enough information. But then there’s always a danger as well, where you can go too far. Get too technical. And particularly things like business interruption insurance. If you can’t trade because you’ve had a fire or a flood or whatever it might be, that is a really technical area of insurance. And depends on the cause of the interruption. In my career, I was involved in one that was a retail shop that was looted during the Manchester riots, if anyone remembers that. They had a very complicated business Interruption claim for all manner of reasons and it has stayed with me. Probably not so much as the broker was!

Lucy Mowatt: You sound traumatised.

Catherine France: It was all alright in the end. But you do have to think, we’ll almost write volume one and if they need any more information they can go to the broker if they’ve got specific requirements. But I see it is difficult not to get into jargon right as if you’re writing for an insurance audience.

A lot of the clients I’ve had have gone to a copywriter. They tried to work with a copywriter who didn’t understand insurance. In a different Industry that might be okay. Because not knowing about it, you might ask all the right questions and understand. But the feedback I get is that they have to spend too long trying to teach the person insurance before they can write the content. You can jump that step because I’m like, ‘okay, right, you want to write about that? This is what I think we should cover. What else did you get out?’ There’s a level of understanding, I suppose, that helps.

Plus like we said earlier, the regulated environment, the sales process, all those kinds of things, you’ve got in the back of your mind when you’re thinking ‘How do we write a piece that takes the client on that journey from here, to saying right this is the broker for me?’

So, yeah, it’s definitely a balance, and an interesting one.

Lucy Mowatt: I think it’s about being honest and open. I always say to our clients, we work with insurance clients: ‘Okay, you’re the expert insurance. I get that. But we are the experts in the copywriting space. So let’s work together to create something that Joe Bloggs out there will actually understand, engage with and learn from’.

Catherine France: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the key thing, isn’t it? You want to be able to deliver the value to the reader. I think, let’s be clear on what you want that blog to do. definitely

Lucy Mowatt: Because actually you could do more damage if it’s heavily jargon-based and technical. Going back to an early point that you mentioned, reflect on what it’s like to work with you.

Catherine France: Confusing your clients is not cool.

Lucy Mowatt: I think the FCA have some kind of rules about that.

Catherine France: Yeah, they probably put it slightly differently to that. I’d imagine say…

Lucy Mowatt: Possibly more complicated and convoluted than that.

Catherine France: What they should just say is it’s not cool stop it. When I run the FCA…

Lucy Mowatt: Life goals.

Lucy Mowatt: Typically, once you’ve been through the writing process and you’ve worked with the client and they’re happy, how would you go about recommending the distribution and promotion of content that you’ve created so that it gets the most visibility?

Catherine France: Depending on where they are in their marketing journey (sorry for using the word journey!), it tends to go on their website. However, I have had a few clients where their website hasn’t been ready yet, or that’s a completely separate project. So we’ve used LinkedIn articles and things like that to get the message out. Then we’ve perhaps broken up blog posts into smaller sections for social media posts and things. But I’ve also got clients that are slightly more sophisticated. They’ll probably put it on their website. They’ll email it to their clients. They make sure everyone internally gets a copy of it. That’s something that sometimes we forget about is actually, we’re publishing all this stuff out oin the world. What about the staff? So if somebody does ring up and say, ‘I’ve just read this’, they’re like, ‘yes’. I suppose they’re quite traditional methods of distribution.

But I think I certainly see an awful lot more opportunity for email marketing and disseminating more messaging via those platforms.

For some of the smaller independent brokers that I work with, I think that there’s an opportunity there.

Lucy Mowatt: A really great way of repurposing something you’ve paid for and created is to send it to your prospects and your clients as a means of staying in touch.

Catherine France: Yeah, and I think we’ve even got one client who has sort of written to them and said: ‘We’re going to be sending more information out to you. This is the kind of stuff we’re going to send you. Have you got any ideas?’ And they’ve had suggestions back from clients and things so it does work really well. And I think, generally, we’re more receptive to getting emails from people. Particularly, if it’s got useful information on it.

Lucy Mowatt: I think that’s the key. It’s the value. If it doesn’t provide value, then don’t send it.

Catherine France: And I think there’s a bit of trepidation. I think some of them think that clients don’t want to hear from them. I’m like, I think they probably do more often than at renewals.

Lucy Mowatt: If you can personalise that email… even something as simple as using their first name in that email marketing… makes it feel more personal and more engaging. And if you can personalise the content itself, which is possible in most email marketing systems and CRMs… But actually it makes you tailor it to them. So it adds that value.

Catherine France: Definitely. And without getting into too much email marketing tech, is that you can group clients together. So you can send different content to different groups of people depending on what you want to talk to them about. That helps with your engagement because you’re not running the risk of sending something to somebody that’s not going to be relevant to them.

Lucy Mowatt: I was gonna say on the subject of effectiveness. Do you have any means of judging how successful a piece of content is or how well it’s performed?

Catherine France: It’s fairly tricky for me to do that myself because a lot of clients get their web provider to upload it for them. So they get their Google Analytics and things like that, and I will see that occasionally. I’ve got other clients who are more hot on the email marketing and we’ll be able to see how many people have opened it, how many people have read it and how many people have clicked through. We’ve had sales and things, so those kinds of things. I think it just depends. And a conversation I would have with the client at the outset is ‘What are our measures of success going to be? How are we gonna track these things? What’s the purpose of the work we’re going to do together? What do you want people to do? What you want the content to do?

I ask those kinds of questions and then kind of build out how we measure it from there. So, it depends, which is the most annoying answer.

Lucy Mowatt: It is a tough one with blogging. In my experience, blogging is kind of a long game a lot of the time, depending on what you’re using it for. Especially if a lot of it’s brand awareness or it’s relationship building. It’s, I suppose again, that’s the thing around sales.

Catherine France: Do you think it has a longer shelf life? I suppose it’s content that can sit on your website, isn’t it? And then I mean you should probably go back and just check if it is still relevant or correct.

Lucy Mowatt: Yeah, I think it can be. What you were saying about ‘What is public liability insurance?’ that kind of thing is unlikely to go out of date particularly frequently, but may need checking. But it’s Evergreen isn’t it?

I guess but the more news stuff, as you say, the response to I don’t know a flooding story or something like that, is more in the moment. It might be relevant for six weeks or maybe you could come back in a year’s time when there’s another round of flooding. Could you edit it at that point you might get a longer tail off the back of that content?

Catherine France: Definitely. Yeah, because things like cyber insurance, change pretty much every other hour. It feels like that’s a slightly more tricky subject to write about. I don’t think I could blog daily.

Lucy Mowatt: It is although it does mean that you never run out of things to say. There’s always another blog waiting to be written on that subject.

I follow some people on Medium who advocate for blogging daily. Nobody’s got time for that.

Catherine France: I think that might be beyond me. No, surely not can’t do not themselves shortly.

Lucy Mowatt: Although I was gonna say, again, there’s a whole other content conversation about AI. We’ll pick that up another time.

So just speaking more generally about blogging, are there any common challenges you come across as a B2B copyrighter, creating blogs? Or anything that comes up repeatedly for you?

Catherine France: I think we probably already touched upon it. I think it’s bringing it to life. It’s avoiding bland, boring content. Especially use the analytics to help that. But, like you said, insurance doesn’t really change, so I suppose some of the challenges are around current topics. At the minute, we’ve got cyber, electric vehicles. We’ve got lots of questions around that and AI. ESG is on everybody’s agenda so I suppose it’s just keeping it fresh. Bringing things to life is probably the biggest challenge but yeah, there’s plenty of content ideas out there.

Lucy Mowatt: A lot of time it’s a case of narrowing it down.

I did have a client say to me yesterday… we had a meeting… they said ‘For the year ahead, I think we’ve got some ideas for 12 possible articles’. And I was like ‘Whoa there’. I said to them ‘I’ve got a file with a hundred ideas already in there. You don’t need to go away and create anything else. I’ve already got a batch of ideas if you want them.’ They’re like, wow.

Catherine France: Yeah, sometimes that’s all they need. Isn’t it? Just a few little pointers just to kind of ssow the seed and they’ll come up with the titles. I think It goes back to what your strategy is, doesn’t it? And it’s not necessarily shiny-objects syndrome. It’s like, everyone’s talking about that, we must write something about that. And knowing when that’s appropriate and when it isn’t.

Lucy Mowatt: Keep that on file. Write it down. If your strategy changes, you can come back to it.

Catherine France: I’ve got notes all over the place.

Lucy Mowatt: I’m bad for listing. I’m trying to keep everything now in a file on my Google Drive just so that I don’t lose anything.

Catherine France: Yeah. If I’m out and about, I’ll just quickly make a note. Then find it three weeks later and I’m like ‘What does that mean?’

Lucy Mowatt: Yeah, it’s just a random phrase out of context but no idea.

Catherine France: At the time that was a brilliant idea, but I’ve no idea. Not a clue. In terms of challenges. Yeah, that’s probably about it.

Lucy Mowatt: Do you have any advice for marketers who are maybe looking to enhance their blogging activity this year? And want to maybe kickstart? Or refresh it? Or push it a bit harder?

Catherine France: Yeah, I mean I would always recommend doing it. And I think it’s really about being consistent.

By consistent, I don’t necessarily mean just blogging for the sake of consistently pushing out content. That’s not necessarily good thing either. I think you’re gonna say you’re going to blog once a month then try and stick to that. If you’re starting out, with the best possible intentions in the world, once a month is probably enough.

At least get that pace going and the rhythm and the kind of the process going definitely. Add a bit of personality to it. Don’t be afraid of that. I think it’s definitely something I would encourage people to do. And not be afraid of tackling some of those subjects and getting them down on paper.

And also, I don’t think necessarily we’re having to write War & Peace. You can write… I think that the sort of average word count is coming down and down and down. That’s because our concentration span diminishing. I’m not sure, but I think it started off that the optimum was 2,500 words and then it came down to 1,500 and now it’s somewhere around about 800 I think. You don’t need to write a book. It can be quite short and punchy. Don’t think they have to be the same length. Some can be longer, some can be shorter. So it’s just not trying to feel overwhelmed by what you could or should be doing and just kind of get it down and…

Lucy Mowatt: It points back to something. You said earlier. I normally advise people is that it’s as long as it needs to be. If it’s a particularly complex subject, it’s likely to be a long article. But don’t be afraid to realise it. If you think it’s gonna be a really long piece, could you break it down into three to five ongoing pieces that get people to come back to the site to read the next instalment? And again that can help with your consistency. But it’s as long as it needs to be.

Catherine France: Yeah, It’s easy to find it overwhelming. I suppose all the things you could or should be doing, but I think you can probably do it quite simply. I think for most people it’s finding the time, isn’t it?We all lead busy lives, particularly my clients, and there’s lots of different demands on your time. Actually having the uninterrupted time to sit down and spend two, three, maybe four hours writing, researching editing… all the things that we do… People probably feel that that’s a little bit off-putting.

Lucy Mowatt: I can totally see that.

Catherine France: Which is why they can pay us to do it for them!

Lucy Mowatt: Nice plug, good work! But it’s true. A lot of the time, it might not even be part of your role writing blog content and articles might not be part of your role. And so it’s very easy to put that off especially when there are client demands.

We were talking before we started recording. It’s so hard even for me. It did say we’ve got time for our blog, the client work takes precedence. And then you get out of the rhythm of doing and then it can feel more daunting.

Catherine France: Yeah. I mean some of my clients, aren’t the marketing person, it’s also an account handler. So yeah, what comes first?

Catherine France: That’s where we can support people and make it easier for them.

Lucy Mowatt: Yeah, absolutely. There iss support out there

Catherine France: I think that’s important. Mmm. Yes.

Lucy Mowatt: And here’s a curveball question: are there any blogs that you think are amazing and well worth a look? Who do you think is blogging well in the business space?

Catherine France: That’s a good question. Have I read any blogs? Do I have time to read anything?

Lucy Mowatt: Is a very good question.

Catherine France: Maybe to edit that one out! I’m not sure.

I read emails, oddly. So I read email. I mean, I’m not on lots of distribution lista for people either. But Mark Masters does a really good one on a Thursday for We Are The Media, which is a good marketing one. It comes out at 6am every Thursday morning, without fail. I’m sure he schedules it but that’s always got lots of different kinds of content in it. So there might be a video podcast a blog post an article.

And I tell you who writes really good blog posts: Martin Huntback at Jammy Digital. He does some good blogs.

Most of the ones I read are marketing-related rather than insurance-related, which says something. And Janine Coombs as well. She does a good vlog. She’s quite funny.

So yeah, they’re probably the ones I read and enjoy.

Lucy Mowatt: And you have your own website and blog. So before we wrap up, where can people find out more about you?

Catherine France: It’s www.catherinefrance.com. All the information about services and my blog posts and articles are all on there (as I scurry away to quickly write a new blog post!).

Lucy Mowatt: And you’re Catherine with a ‘c’?

Catherine France: Yes, I am, indeed.

Lucy Mowatt: Thank you so much for joining me. It’s been so nice to catch up and about all things blogging. Let’s definitely follow up with another podcast about AI in the future!