Canary Dwarf recently celebrated 21 years, and I took the opportunity to look at the services we offer and whether there were any opportunities to fine tune it.
When we started in 2001 the internet was still young. Google hadn’t been invented, and social media was just for kids. I left a journalistic background that despised the internet, and made a new career out of building websites. But as time went on, those skills I left behind kept gnawing away at me, and now more than 20 years later, the combined skillset of being able to create content and deliver it with tech, is more in demand than ever.
I asked my client base what services they valued and I even suggested I might stop doing some things and specialise. I did caveat that by saying ‘if you let me’. I had such a huge response, and a bit of an epiphany.
I have been doing more and more writing and photography, and I still love it as much as I always did. In fact, some of you may know about my ‘side’ projects, which have now become fully fledged media properties in their own right. I write every day for Forres Local and Visit Forres and I take a few pictures too!
But delivering everything through Canary Dwarf was a bit overwhelming and I’m not going to lie, it messed with my head. I’ll spare you the details, but something needed to change. My head needed to change. I’ve been a big fan of the ‘Headspace’ app and mindfulness movement, and I set about compartmentalising things in my head, and an idea started to form.
A new business that’s not a new business
So one thing thing that was clear, is that when I built a website, it felt very much like a Canary Dwarf website. When i wrote an article, took a picture, that felt more like Marc Hindley, and it was, thoughts and images made into words and photos, were very much the craft of my mind, whereas a website had software, servers and superhighway stuff. Then the light bulb moment.
Marc Hindley Content and Media was born. A wiggly line drawn in the sand that makes it easier for me to differentiate between two distinct services. Creating technical vehicles for delivering content through Canary Dwarf while Marc Hindley creates content for technical delivery. Yeah, that works. Well for me anyway. Actually writing to down makes it sound more complicated than it is.
The line is wiggly because there will always be crossover. It’s not a separate business, I suppose it’s a sub-brand. It’s not going to create masses of admin with separate bank accounts. It’s ultimately to make things easier. Not only for me to grasp, but to advertise to customers.
My content and media offering will include good old copywriting, photography and video production as a service, but also the things that make content work in a digital world, such as email marketing, social campaigns, digital ads, press coverage, digital PR and funnel marketing.
The new PR
Take PR as an example. Having worked in a reasonably large newspaper group AND run my own PR company, both are very important cogs in the marketing of businesses, but both are continuing to change out of recognition. The mainstay of a PR company would once have been press releases sent to a newspaper. A modern PR company now has to think about how their words get onto websites, not just those of the news organisations, but they need to create technical proposition that focus on keywords, links, search engines and data analysis.
That’s what Marc Hindley Content and Media will be about. I came to websites with these skills. I’ve kept on top of them and continued to learn. A website on its own is as useless as a car without petrol. Fuel is content for your vehicle. It may be shiny, beautiful and something to treasure, but it isn’t going anywhere without its content.
And that’s where I can help you. Not to just write for you and take pictures, but to make those words and images pack a punch, get clicks and attract new customers for your amazing business.
So, if you want some fuel for your website, don’t call Canary Dwarf, call Marc Hindley, he knows about content and media.
Oh yeah, and I built him a website: marchindley.media