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Avium Grounds Maintenance Swindon
Luke Whiteside of grounds maintenance company Avium, based in Swindon, says local companies are recognising the importance of good first impressions. As confidence in the economy grows, more business parks, hotels and large companies are now planning their year’s grounds maintenance to ensure their external presentation is faultless.
During difficult economic times, managing extensive grounds often takes a back seat while resources are spent on what are perceived as more essential activities. Grounds maintenance often adds to the in-house staff’s workload, who don’t have the time, skills or the equipment to do the work thoroughly. As a result, the business grounds can look neglected, which has a detrimental effect on the company’s image.
Avium Grounds Maintenance reports an increase in forward planning already in 2011, with Swindon companies keen to create good first impressions for visitors, customers and staff alike. The early snow in November and December caused damage not only to grounds in the region, but also to structures such as cycle sheds and smoking shelters. Avium’s team have been kept busy doing essential repairs as well as ensuring customers have enough salt and grit supplies to cope with any severe weather conditions.
As well as providing grounds maintenance services to some of Swindon’s most prestigious companies, Avium is also an approved contractor for the Environment Agency. Much of this work carried out involves the treatment of Japanese knotweed on river banks, where extreme caution is needed to avoid any contamination of water courses.
Luke Whiteside of Avium Grounds Maintenance said, “Keeping large grounds looking good needs ongoing work. During the winter months, there is still work to be done to keep grounds in tip-top condition. Frosts can dislodge recently planted trees and shrubs, so it’s essential to make sure they are bedded in properly. And it’s important to do any pruning before the end of February before the bird nesting season starts.”
Avium gives seasonal horticultural hints on its website to help companies keep on top of their grounds maintenance.
Anyone interested in a grounds maintenance service can contact Avium on 01793 729999, or by email to enquiries@avium-gm.co.uk.
When it comes to business, we all need a little help. So where do we go to find it? We research blogs and websites, quiz people at networking meetings, and perhaps ask questions on forums and social media sites.
This blog post is a plea … and no, I’m not asking for help (although I frequently do). Instead I’m asking you to spare the time to use two of the most important little words in our language.
Clearly, if you’ve found some useful information on a website or a blog, it’s not necessary to email the site owner and express your thanks. However, if this advice and support has been offered on a more personal level, via social media or a forum perhaps, courtesy should prevail.
It is part of our philosophy to be free with our help and suggestions, and we regularly go out of our way to help people. A good example of this is our ‘Introduction to Twitter’ guide. This is now available to people signing up on our website. Previously it was just for clients, although we emailed it to around a hundred or so other people. It took a lot of time to research and write, and it is regularly updated. Despite the time it takes, we still willingly offer it free of charge to anyone who needs a little help. Sadly, only about 20% of the people who were sent the guide acknowledged its receipt or took the trouble to say thank you.
Everyday people give freely of their knowledge, wisdom and experience – advice which they could be charging premium prices for. They are under no obligation to help others and could spend their time on more profitable pursuits.
What would we do if our sources of free help and advice disappeared? How many businesses would survive without it, let alone grow? Could we afford to pay for every snippet of advice that comes our way? No! It would be road to ruin.
So is it too much to ask everyone to spare two words and reply with a simple ‘thank you’? Sadly, there seems to be an pandemic of people who will are happy to take the help that’s offered, without sparing a few seconds to acknowledge it.
When it comes to marketing your business, your reputation is your most valuable asset. Don’t forget: those two little words, or lack of them, could make or break that!
If you want more referrals, thank those people who have referred you. If you’ve been given advice, thank the donor – you might need their help again soon.
As small businesses, let’s unite in the cause of common courtesy. Let’s start appreciating the wealth of support we receive every day … and ensure it will still be there tomorrow. All we have to do is say a simple ‘THANK YOU’.
Remember that old headline grabber? Sex … now I’ve got your attention? Well this blog isn’t about that 3-letter word. But it is about how to make your body (copy) so desirable your readers simply can’t resist it. Incidentally, using headlines like that are known as ‘link bait’ and we’ll be covering them in another post soon.
However, if you are attracting people to your website or your blog, are you doing your best to keep them there? There is a great deal more to good copywriting than just penning a few well-chosen words.
When someone visits your website, picks up your brochure, or even opens an email, your job is to make sure they stay and read what you have to say. And that’s not just about the words. How your copy is presented and how easily it can be read is critical.
When you’re writing your own copy, there’s a lot you can do to help. To get you started, here’s three of the most common mistakes you can easily avoid:
Uppercase letters
When it comes to uppercase letters … avoid them! In short measures, copy in uppercase letters looks like the writer is shouting. This can be quite effective to emphasise the odd word – FREE – is a good example. But overdo it and you’re inviting trouble.
When we look at words, we don’t actually read the individual letters. We determine what the words are by subconsciously following the shape of the word. This helps us to scan read very quickly. It can be illustrated by some of the crazy sentences which are full of mistakes, yet perfectly understandable.
“In fatc spelign cna be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.”
When a whole paragraph is written in uppercase letters, you have to deliberately read each word to understand the meaning. This takes time and is hard work.
READING COPY WHICH IS ALL IN UPPERCASE LETTERS IS VERY HARD AND MOST PEOPLE JUST WON’T BOTHER. THEY WILL TAKE ONE LOOK AND GIVE UP VERY QUICKLY BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE THE TIME OR INCLINATION TO WORK THAT HARD. AVOID USING ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS IF YOU WANT YOUR COPY TO BE READ!
Aligning your text
Another common mistake is how the text is aligned. If you look on your Word toolbar, you will see you have 4 options: left aligned, centred, right aligned (rarely used, so we won’t dwell on it) and justified.
Left aligned text is always recommended because it is much easier to read. This is because we read from left to right and we can instinctively find the start of the lines. The ‘white space’ it creates on the right-hand side also helps us read the text more easily.
Text which is centred on the page is much harder to read than left-aligned. It prevents scan-reading and makes the audience work harder – that’s if they bother at all!
Centred text is frequently combined with uppercase letters, causing an even bigger problem for the reader:
READING COPY WHICH IS ALL IN UPPERCASE LETTERS IS VERY HARD
AND MOST PEOPLE JUST WON’T BOTHER. THEY
WILL TAKE ONE
LOOK AND GIVE UP VERY QUICKLY BECAUSE
THEY DON’T HAVE
THE TIME OR INCLINATION TO WORK THAT
HARD. AVOID USING ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS IF YOU WANT YOUR COPY TO READ!
Justified text is also common. Justified text is where the words are spaced out across the line to align with both the right and left margins, as I’ve done here. It is difficult to read because it creates gaps between words, particularly when used in narrow columns. This makes us read in fits and starts and prevents us from reading smoothly along the line.
Justified text is frequently used in books and magazines. This works because generally good typesetting software is used, which is much more sophisticated than the average word processor.
Colour
Colour, if you have the skills to use it well, can be very effective. But many websites and blogs are populated with an assortment of garish colour fonts, which basically ‘hurts your eyes’ and puts you off reading the content. And all too often, this is combined with uppercase letters and centred text!
READING COPY WHICH IS ALL IN UPPERCASE LETTERS IS VERY HARD
AND MOST PEOPLE JUST WON’T BOTHER. THEY
WILL TAKE ONE
LOOK AND GIVE UP VERY QUICKLY BECAUSE
THEY DON’T HAVE
THE TIME OR INCLINATION TO WORK THAT
HARD. AVOID USING ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS IF YOU WANT YOUR COPY TO READ!
It won’t matter if you are the best or the worst writer in the world, or if you’ve sorted out your features and your benefits – if you don’t make it easy for your audience to read your copy, you’ll have wasted your time!
There’s always a lot of confusion about the difference between features and benefits. Anyone in marketing will tell you should write about the benefits of your products or services – not the features. Great advice! But in reality – how do you go about it?
First of all, let’s look at the difference between them:
What is a feature?
A feature of your business is one of its characteristics. For example: as a copywriter, my features include experience, I’m a trained copywriter, I have a lot of marketing knowledge and I can work remotely.
If I was a solicitor, I might have 3 offices across the area and all my offices might have large car parks. If I was a butcher, I might make my own traditional sausages. I might even have won prizes for my sausages.
These are all features of the business – note the common words ‘I’ and ‘my’. If you are writing about the features, you will find your copy is full of ‘we’ words (we, me, my, us, our, I). You want to avoid this where possible.
What is a benefit?
A benefit is something you gain from a product or service. For example: if you were my client, you would benefit because I can work remotely. How would you benefit from this? You wouldn’t need to find office space, a desk, or a PC for me. You wouldn’t need to supply coffee. You wouldn’t need to spend time in meetings with me. All this will save you a lot of time and money.
If we were talking about the solicitor, you would benefit from having an office near by to save you travelling time and you’d have no hassles getting parked.
Getting the idea? Also note the common words have changed. When it comes to benefits, I’m writing about ‘you’ and what ‘you’ will get out of it. When you are writing about the benefits, you’ll automatically be using the all-important words – ‘you’ and ‘your’.
How to write about benefits
- Write a list of all your business features
- Next to each feature, write the words ‘which means that’
- Spend some time working out how your client or customer will benefit from each feature.
Take the butcher as an example:
I make my own traditional sausages – which means that – you know they are freshly made from locally produced pork. It also means that they are not full of chemical additives, and there are no food mile issues when you buy them. You can eat them knowing they are good for you and taste wonderful. And when you’ve tasted them, you’ll understand why I’ve won prizes for them! - When you have completed your list of benefits, start writing about them – not your features.
- Finished writing? Now have a count up. Count all your possessive pronouns (the ‘we’ words) and all the ‘you’ and ‘yours’. Your ‘you’ words should outnumber the ‘we’ words by about 4 to 1.
Easy – isn’t it?
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