You completed our ITQ Social Media Certificate at the end of 2013. I believe you and your wife had just set up Social I Media at the time. How has business changed for you since?
Wow! We have changed a lot since then. We started Social I Media as a way of working using our skill set and doing what we enjoyed – Anna, my wife is a journalist and brilliant at writing. My skill set was around training and digital communications. Over the past 4 years, we have focused more on communications generally rather than marketing specifically. We feel we are communicators with knowledge of digital marketing rather than marketers.
During 2016, we took the plunge to rebrand to Luminescence– Brighter Communications. We write quality content for professional services – mainly, but not exclusively aimed at the B2B market. We work closely with businesses to:
- Create strategies – for communications in general, for PR, for content or social media marketing
- Create and/or copy edit content. This might be online or offline content of all forms including visual, audio and written and includes white papers, researched articles, campaigns and more. We are using the digital knowledge we have to ensure we create content that people will read and engage with.
- Manage PR. We create exposure and manage reputations of businesses on a regular basis.
- Training – We deliver bespoke training for specific clients and specific industries across communication disciplines. We deliver training in a number of digital areas including search engine optimisation, digital marketing, social media, public speaking, crisis communication and more.
From a business growth point of view, we now work with a number of associates – journalists, researchers, PR and content specialists as the clients we are working with have increased in size and quantity.
We won our first award during 2016 too. The CIPR Pride Awards Gold – it was a good year all in all!
Do you remember why you took our course? How has it helped you grow as a business /person?
I originally took your course as I wanted external validation as a social media / digital expert. Your course was the only one accredited and I realised how important that was – as opposed to getting a branded certificate. I enjoyed the course as it forces you to evidence what you are learning – you don’t just get a piece of paper.
After taking the course, I was paid back many times over. I created the social I media website as part of the course (so didn’t need to pay for that). In addition, 1 website page which was optimised based on what I learnt during the course sent enough work our way, to pay for the course 5 times over!
We also won work because I could use the digital knowledge I gained when writing in bids – and could evidence the skills.
“Never a day goes by without me being grateful I did the ITQ in Social Media”.
What are your business / personal aims for 2017
Now we have gone through the rebranding exercise, Luminescence needs to push on and identify additional work which fits into the professional services communications arena. Personally, I intend to focus on growing the training arm of the business, delivering bespoke training but also working with trusted associates to deliver short easy to understand modules in digital communications and content distribution for specific industries.
Thank you for your time Anna and I’m delighted to see how much your business has developed since first working with you.
Anna Marsden can be contacted via
M: 07984 638586
T: 01223 850359