It’s hard to believe that when I grew up there were only 5 channels on terrestrial TV (6 if you count Welsh channel S4C – Es Pedwar Eck). The BBC is Britain’s original broadcasting service and it has gained the trust not only of the British public, but also of people worldwide via its international radio stations and television channels. In Britain, the BBC has no adverts (except to promote its own radio and TV shows), and it’s mostly funded by a mandatory licence fee which almost everyone who owns a television set has to pay – if you still own a black and white TV or are registered blind you get a discount, and if you are 75 or over you can have a licence for free.

A very brief history of the BBC licence fee

In 1923 an annual licence fee was introduced under the Wireless Telegraphy Act when the British Government decided not to allow adverts on the radio. The licence didn’t cover television until June 1946 and it’s only since 1963 that the BBC received the full amount of the fee. The numbers of people willing to pay the fee have declined since around 2016.

Why people don’t like the licence fee

People have lost faith in the BBC

Due to a number of scandals with highly-paid presenters getting away with deplorable acts, as well as certain political parties being given too much airtime, the BBC’s integrity and impartiality have been questioned.

There is a greater choice of media on other platforms

The BBC has a lot of competition from streaming services, and the programmes on those services have high production values or provide more variety - or, in some cases evolved to feed our dopamine addictions. The fact that people are watching so much that isn’t BBC makes them feel like the licence fee isn’t value for money. When the licence fee company page is trying to promote the fact that you can watch all of these other channels and services, that you are already paying for, when you pay for the licence fee, it doesn’t feel like a plus. The BBC, and our other terrestrial channels, also used to show a greater variety of television because they would get programmes from other channels and services (such as those which used to be on Sky) and as someone who had five channels, I didn’t feel like I missed out too much.

Said services are also increasingly competing with each other, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens if their greed becomes their undoing.

It feels like an additional cost

If someone has paid for the television, and they’ve paid for a streaming service or two, or perhaps a video game subscription and they don’t believe that they are even watching the BBC, they are going to feel like they have purchased what they wanted to purchase and spent their money, so why should they spent another £180 a year just to be able to use what they have paid for already.

The licence fee is not optional, and people in most cases are not deciding for themselves to pay for it. The choice has been taken away from them.

The rules have been inconsistent

BBC iPlayer, the BBC’s streaming service launched in 2007, but the mandate for a licence to use it only came in in 2016. Citizens who had become used to using it would have felt annoyed that they now had to be charged when they hadn’t been previously.

Aggressive Communications

I grew up with the BBC and I love it, as well as some of the great programmes that it has made. What I don’t love is the licencing company. It used to be very aggressive in the way that it communicated with customers, and soon-to-be customers. I arrived to my first flat to a pile of letters telling the occupier of the property (aka me, the person who has literally walked through the door for the first time) that I have to pay the licence fee or there will be an investigation and enforcement action. That’s not nice to hear as someone who has just moved into a property and hasn’t done anything wrong, and already I felt defensive. I didn’t even have a television for about 5 years.

I know that others first experience of the fee was the same, and when you’re unfairly making people feel like a criminal, it makes it hard to like you.

Communications have softened

Communications have softened in recent years, but for many the damage has been done, they have the choice to watch other things, and some have lost faith in the BBC.

The benefits of communal, independent television

The BBC is part of British culture and it is a tool that has brought us together through shared experiences such as popular soaps like EastEnders, the King or Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day and national fundraising events such as Comic Relief and Children in Need. Television channels watched by everyone in the country are a way to distribute important health or safety messages. It’s also important for children that the content they watch is regulated so that it is appropriate for them and that it isn’t endless.

The BBC as a channel is also one of the few channels left without adverts and it is independent of state inference (for argument’s sake).

Tactics the BBC could use to improve relations with licence fee payers

Payment proportional to income

If might feel fairer if those earning less aren’t paying the same for the BBC licence fee as those with higher incomes, and, as people do earn more, they might be more willing to pay the fee because they feel more fairly treated, especially when people are facing increasing costs of living, and they’ll back the BBC because as they have paid for it anyway, they will likely have watched it.

Payment breaks

With just about every other subscription model you have the option to pause it and not use the service. Should the BBC licence fee also offer this – e.g., if it runs out when you are on holiday, should you have the option to continue the payment from when you return, rather than when you are away and not watching TV?

Including the licence fee in taxes

Other state broadcasters, such as DR in Denmark and Yle in Finland have scrapped their licence fees and fund their television services through taxes. This wouldn’t make it seem like there is an additional charge and with that barrier removed we might see support for the BBC increase. The counter argument is that the BBC might lose it’s impartiality, however is it better to have it than not have it at all because support is too low?

Show S4C and Alba programmes on regular BBC

Broadcasting S4C and Alba (aka Scottish) programmes on mainstream BBC channels instead of having their own separate channels might be more beneficial for the Welsh and Gaelic languages than broadcasting them only on separate channels. I have watched programmes in these languages on occasion when I have found something interesting, but I have missed most of them because I don’t know when there are good shows. This does run the risk of Welsh and Gaelic programmes being overlooked, however it could gain the programmes a wider following as well as a better understanding and appreciation of other British cultures and languages.

Licence lottery

Entering licence fee payers into a lottery to win a sum of money each month, even a smallish sum, could be an incentive to encourage people to pay and help improve relations.

How do you feel about the BBC licence fee and how do you think that the BBC can improve its image? Or how is TV in your country, do you have a trustworthy state TV channel, or would you like one? Comment below.

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Stop AI companies from destroying books

If you care about books, about literature, about your heritage, culture or even reality as we know it, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that AI companies, including Anthropic AI and Amazon, are buying books en masse – we’re talking in the thousands, we’re talking rare books – scanning them to feed their AI systems and then destroying them. Even if you’re an AI champion, even if you have great uses for AI and it’s helped your business - if you’re human, I think you’ll agree that this isn’t right and it isn’t sustainable either. There’s a petition that you can sign here. Please sign it and share it.

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And now for something completely different. We’re coming to the end of summer (in the Northern hemisphere anyway) and I think the perfect remedy for anyone slowly trickling back to the office and embracing the holiday blues is a look back at some of the best marketing campaigns that have happened in 2026 so far. We also need a reminder from time to time that the internet, and us marketing folk, can also be fun.

British Airways vs. Norwegian Airlines

World cup fever hit, well, the world. And Norwegian Airlines had the ball in their court as they challenged British Airways to an Instagram bet. England wins, Norwegian has to change their Instagram logo to British Airways logo. Norway wins, British Airways has to use Norwegian’s logo.

And they wouldn’t be Norwegian without the Viking row.

This was an enjoyable campaign that showed the human side of both companies. There was plenty of banter in the run up to the game, proving that England and Norwegian share a sense of humour, and this was amusing for us to see play out as onlookers.

Aldi Ireland

Aldi are famous for their fun marketing, and they also got in on the Viking Row action with a video short ahead of the Norwegian game. In fact, this was just one of a series of videos with the same concept – and adorable dog – that contributed to the football theme in an amusing and light-hearted way.

Jaffa Cakes

McVities got lucky this summer with a partial eclipse over parts of Europe. It meant that they could bring back one of the best catch phrases ever from one of the best biscuit (sorry, cake!) adverts.

Let me explain. Jaffa Cakes, the cakes that famously had a court case to prove that they were a cake and not a biscuit, had an advertising campaign on television in the 90s where a teacher stood in front of her class and demonstrated the eclipse with a Jaffa Cake. “Full moon. Half moon. Total eclipse.” is a very successful catch phrase that people of a certain age in my country (millennials) still say and do when we have Jaffa Cakes, especially when we are with other people who know the advert. The fact that the catch phrase is still going strong speaks volumes for the campaign’s success.

They even struck double luck, singer Bonnie Tyler (RIP) also previously made a Jaffa Cake advert.

Count Binface’s Clacton By-election campaigns

I don’t usually get political on the blog, but the one and only pulled off a brilliant bit of PR when a certain politician who’s already had too much publicity quit his position and called a by-election that unnecessarily cost us tax payers £250,000 (thanks for that!). Knowing it was a complete farce, all of our regular political parties opted out and let the Count handle this shit show, completely steal the show and give us our money’s worth. We were treated to interviews that were pure gold, catchy music videos and this unusual situation even captured the attention of media worldwide. Count Binface won about a quarter of the vote, certain politician is still being investigated for accepting suspicious donations of £5 million, and there will probably be another by-election for another £350,000 (aka more than the cost of my house!). At least it wasn’t all in vein, eh?

Have you seen any great marketing campaigns in 2026, or even run any yourself? Comment below, or go one better - get featured and tell us all about it.

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In other news…

If you care about books, about literature, about your heritage, culture or even reality as we know it, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that AI companies, including Anthropic AI and Amazon, are buying books en masse – we’re talking in the thousands, we’re talking rare books – scanning them to feed their AI systems and then destroying them. Even if you’re an AI champion, even if you have great uses for AI and it’s helped your business - if you’re human, I think you’ll agree that this isn’t right and it isn’t sustainable either. There’s a petition that you can sign here. Please sign it and share it.

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Last week I was told that I don’t have enough experience in social media. Last week I was also interviewed about social media marketing for a social media marketing podcast (out soon). So here’s an interview with….ME, answering interview questions about social media.

To start

What inspired you to work in Social Media?

Nothing, it just happened and became part of my job. I started my career in the early days of social media, coming out of uni at the point where everyone was first excited about Facebook – but it was still a very social platform rather than corporate. At a journalism internship I undertook just before my first “proper” job I signed up to Twitter because it was the fastest and easiest way to contact people for articles (it still is). I then worked at Holiday Extras, a British company that offers travel add-ons such as airport parking and transfers. I was in their short breaks division and it was there that I started working with Hootsuite to schedule lots of social posts across our different holiday brands, as well as our family brand Play’n’Stay and our Theatre Break Brand Show and Stay.

Are you on social media in your down time? What platforms are your go to?

I wrote a book called How to Leave a Group Chat which discusses the pitfalls of social media and why you should use your smartphone and social media less, but ironically I am still on social media a lot. Most of the time I leave my phone in a different room, but then I’ll be on my computer where I use social and schedule marketing posts for my book, my poetry and work. It is very easy to get sucked in too. If you count YouTube as social media that would be my guilty pleasure. I enjoy longer documentaries as much as shorts from some of my favourite content creators. I love travel vlogs and DIY videos, and, more recently, videos with gardening tips.

@louisaguiseauthorHow to be more production - put your phone down and leave it in another room. It takes some getting used to staying away from your phone, and sometimes my phone ends up next to me and I am not even sure why or how it happened, but this #lifehack had definitely improved my focus. For more tips and tricks to manage your phone time better, look out for my first non-fiction book #HowtoLeaveAGroupChat coming out in June! #smartphonehack #concentrationhack #putyourphonedown #getmoredone #nodistractions #howtoleaveagroupchat #phoneuse #smartphone #screentime #phoneuse #cellphoneuse #beproductive

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Have you ever accidentally posted from the wrong account?

I have, especially as my Twitter accounts are linked. Nothing big has happened there, I just deleted the post as soon as I realised. I can’t remember any specific examples, so sorry, no juicy stories there.

Do you like your own content from your personal account?

I’m not keen on photos and videos featuring me in them, but to promote my book How to Leave a Group Chat, I have had to get on with it and make that kind of content. I enjoy making videos – I have some great stuff on YouTube and TikTok.

@louisaguiseauthorCat vs. Ariel! Round 1! #cat #catsoftiktok #catok #catvideo #funnycatvideos

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What is the best and worst part of the job?

When you do a lot of social media it can get monotonous, especially when you’re saying the same thing in 10 different ways for 10 different posts. But you can have fun with it as well, I have enjoyed running competitions online where people can engage in fun ways.

How do you describe what you do to your grandma?

This is probably the strangest question that I have ever answered. I wrote a poem about my Nanna, called Nanna, it’s a fun poem that the priest read at her funeral and it made people laugh on a sad occasion. Nanna was the one raiding charity shops to bring me books and encouraging me to read and write.

@louisaguiseauthorLouisa Guise performing her poem Nanna at Dreading Slam, Reading Sunday 12th April 2026. Catch Louisa on tour around the South East - https://www.louisaguiseauthor.com/home/author-book-signing-events-2025/ If you enjoyed this and want to know more about Louisa's poetry, see her website: https://www.louisaguiseauthor.com/ How to Leave a Group Chat, a book about communications and smartphone use is available from Fourbears books https://www.fourbearsbooks.co.uk/product-page/how-to-leave-a-group-chat and purchases from here can be signed. Let's connect: https://www.louisaguiseauthor.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-guise/ https://allaboutdigitalmarketing.substack.com/ https://x.com/whatiwrote_ https://bsky.app/profile/louisaguiseauthor.bsky.social #openmic #poetsofinstagram #youtubepoets #poetsofyoutube #poemsaboutlife #poetry #poetrylover #poetrycommunity #poetryofinstagram #poetrystatus #poetryreciting #poetryreading #poetryreadings #catpoetry #poetryaccount #poetryaboutlove #authorsoftiktok #authortok #authortube #poetrytok #poetrytube #poemsonyoutube #poemyoutube #welshauthor #spokenword #spokenwordnight #spokenworduk #spokenwordss #poetryreadings #nonfiction #writersoftiktok #spokenword #openmic #happyfriday #booktok #poetrytok #writer #fiction #reads #spokenwordartist#grandma #grandmother #nana #nanna #spokenworduk #spokenwordss #poetryreadings #nonfiction #writersoftiktok #spokenword #openmic #booktok #poetrytok #writer #fiction #reads #spokenwordartist #poetryaboutlife #childhoodpoetry

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What is the moment you are most proud about with socials?

I’ve managed to grow socials at every company that I have worked for, I have also run some great promotions that have increased our social followings, such as a fun early promote I did with the Queen of Twitter.

The job

What does the scope of your job include? Are you doing 100 jobs in one?

I haven’t had a job where I’ve not done 100 jobs in 1. I left university thinking I’d only be doing copywriting, but from the get go my jobs have been incredibly varied and introduced me to every part of communications and marketing. I can claim copywriting, SEO, graphic design, social media, web design, intranet, radio, video making, researching, creating policies, project management, running multichannel campaigns, public speaking, presentations… and because so many people want my advice I set up this Substack blog All About Digital Marketing to share my knowledge and expertise. I host guest bloggers too.

Do you come up with the posts as well? What’s your secret sauce in deciding what to post?

That’s a big question. It very much depends. I do come up with social posts and write them myself, some posts will be spontaneous. Some posts will be planned according to the objective of the campaign. For business posts I’d always get sign off because you don’t want backlash or to post something that the company wouldn’t find appropriate.

Do you ever get ‘guidance’ from e.g. your manager you disagree with? (and do you go against it?)

As the expert, and especially as I have become more senior, I always speak up when I don’t agree with another colleague, whether that’s a manager or someone else, and I explain why. Of course, in business I won’t always get the final say, so I have sometimes run with things despite this. Sometimes it has also turned out that someone else has had a better idea that me, that’s why collaboration is so valuable.

How do you measure success personally and what does your boss actually care about?

In my most recent role I had a great boss who really trusted me to know what I was doing, and trusted herself that she had hired the right person. She measured results by achieving targets and goals and on the whole didn’t mind how I met those targets and goals as long as they were met. We were pretty much on the same page - I care about meeting targets and goals too, and I love it when I exceed them.

Paid Advertising

Are you utilising paid ads at the moment and if so, which platforms?

I don’t have any paid ads running at the moment, but most recently I was using them on Google and LinkedIn.

How do you find organic vs paid ads for driving grow for your brand/s?

Paid ads, increasingly, can get you seen by more people. In my experience they grow your followers a lot faster and because the social companies are greedy they’re increasingly limiting how effective organic social can be.

With the level of creative output needed specifically for Meta, how are you overcoming creative fatigue?

By slowing down, and I think that gets me more attention because when you are quiet, and then you post something, people are more curious.

Are you re-utilising organic posts for ads and are you re-editing them to optimise?

I sometimes repost and re-edit, but when you are on the hamster wheel making something new, it’s easy to forget that you have some old content that is also really good and a lot of people won’t have seen it yet.

In your opinion, where do you think the future of paid ads is and will we see more marketing spend go to in-person events?

Social media seems to peak, and new platforms come along all of the time. Facebook used to be more effective, now it’s seen as an older person’s platform, but I find Facebook groups are really good – and they don’t need payment. If current platforms become too expensive, and newer, fresher platforms appear that are more cost-effective, people will go there. AI is also a game changer and predicted to become more intelligent, so there might be ways to bypass paid ads.

Content creation

How do you get your ideas on what to post?

Usually ideas for me just appear out of thin air.

Trends: Do you jump on them?

Sometimes if they are fun and sensible.

Do you feel pressure to be ‘always on’?

I used to. I’ve gotten better at switching off.

Do you use the same content across platforms? Or do you do different content for different ones?

I used to really resist that in the beginning, but I realise that people won’t see everything so it’s advantageous to showcase your content multiple times.

What do you waste way too much time on?

YouTube

What is overhyped in socials?

Opinions of things and people that we know nothing about. In the same way that a media story can be exaggerated, social can amplify that even more and everyone can have an opinion on something they don’t need to such as celebrities, a recent one was Ariana Grande’s appearance or Prince Harry visiting his Dad, leave these people alone and let them just do their thing.

On the AI craze

What do you want to tell the person who says ‘I replaced my whole marketing team with Claude’?

One disadvantage of LLMs is that they began highbrow, because they were trained on the best literature, and because so many people worldwide have inputted into them, they have dumbed down. AI companies are buying books and destroying them, scanning thousands of books en masse to make AI better. This is a threat to our knowledge and reality, and it is unsustainable. Recently I had two submissions for my blog, two different people living in two different countries very far apart, working for two different companies, and the blogs were VERY similar in style. I accepted the first, and when I saw the second and put them side by side, I retracted my offer. The lesson is that if you only use AI content for marketing, your marketing will become bland and boring. AI for LLMs is also trained on stolen data, so if you replaced the entire marketing team with Claude you are at risk of lawsuits. There’s a lot of backlash against AI content too.

Do you jump on every AI tool you come across? Or is it all just ‘hype’?

I have spoken to friends more technical than myself, and the conclusion is that AI is somewhere in the middle. It’s not as stupid as some people think, it’s also not as amazing as some people think. Having written How to Leave a Group Chat, which was finalised around the time Chat GPT was released to the public, I know from my research that it’s really important not to believe hype but to stand back and assess, what is this, why are we using it, how should it be used appropriately, etc., because if we just run wild, as we did with social media and later smartphones, we end up in a mess.

On the job & advice

What do you wish everyone knew about your job?

I wish people knew the hard work that goes into it, all the planning and the other related skills. Because often people think you magic social media and content out of thin air.

What is the #1 thing you wished people understood?

As above.

What advice would you give to someone starting a career in social media?

Experiment as much as you can and see what works.

Are your own socials as active as you would like?

No, but I only have so much time in the day.

Socials through the ages

Over time since you started, what are the biggest changes you have seen?

I’ve seen many changes. Companies getting in on social when it started as a setup between friends. People connecting with their parents – in the beginning, if I had social (I was late to the party) no way would I have connected with my parents. The rise of content creators and vloggers. Advertising disrupting videos – there were none in the beginning. Different social media channels come and go. Entire cultures and expectations change – e.g., holiday used to be about you getting away from everything, now every second is documented in real-time.

What has not changed at all?

People’s need to connect with each other and find others wherever they are. Also, many people are self-absorbed and social media has really highlighted this. Social media has also highlighted people’s competitive nature – e.g., everyone has to find the best photo for Instagram.

What is next for Social Media, how do you think it will evolve over the next 3-5 years?

At the moment AI will advance it, or there could be enough backlash that AI’s role is reduced (or we could run out of water). MySpace is said to be making a return, that’s interesting. I think in the next 3-5 years it’s highly likely a whole new social platform could emerge that wins the race.

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It’s been just over two years since I published How to Leave a Group Chat, a book which looks at why we communication the way that we do and helps empower us to use our smartphones less, something which we’re discovering is good for us. Book contracts with publishers don’t last forever, so what happens when your contract comes to an end and your publisher will no longer be supporting your book?

Here’s what I did, and what might be helpful for you to consider when the time for your book contract comes to an end too. This advice will also be helpful for anyone who is looking to self publish their book too.

I paid my publisher the postage cost to have the remaining books delivered to me

This was stipulated in my contract, and even though I initially thought that my book had a shelf life, I seem to have been proven wrong. The conversation around children using smartphones is finally starting to shift to adults using smartphones, and the impact that our use can have on our little ones. We’re discovering more and more each day about the effect that smartphones and electronic tablets (which are oversized smartphones) can have on all of us. So I’m having the books back, and I am intending to sell all of them.

I requested to have the text files of the book sent to me

Having the book files back was agreed in my contract. I have the book files back too, and as I ensured in my contract that I have the rights, I am free to proceed with How to Leave a Group Chat as I see fit.

I added Woocommerce to my Wordpress website so that I could sell my books directly

Woocommerce is a platform, and Wordpress plugin, that allows you to have a shopping site, or to add an online shop to your existing site. I added it to my website a couple of months ago so that if my books disappeared from retail, the transition to selling them would be seamless.

I have detailed in a previous blog the steps that I took to add Woocommerce to my website.

I put the e-book of How to Leave a Group Chat back online

The moment my publisher discontinued my book, it was gone from Amazon as an e-book listing. I requested the files in order to reinstate it.

To reinstate my e-book on the web, I took the following steps:

1. I did a lot of research.

There are many different websites where you can self-publish a book. I opted to start with Lulu.com, which is actually the first online publisher – it predates Amazon, seems simple to use and has a very comprehensive YouTube channel with instructions. I thought that if it didn’t go well, I could try another, and it was important to me that putting my book back out there I could get into Gardners - most bookshops won’t take a book that’s not on Gardners.

2. I looked into ISBN numbers

It wasn’t clear to me if I needed a new ISBN number or not. Here’s a video explanation about this from Author Bethany Atazadeh who knows more about this than I do.

If you do not have an ISBN (there are some suggestions e-books don’t need them) I suggest you do some research before deciding whether you’d like to use the free ISBN number, or you’d like to purchase your own from Nielsens in the UK, Bowker in the USA or whoever your local distributor is.

One important thing to consider is that the ISBN number is how sites recognise your book. Here’s a good article about ISBN numbers by writer Ellen Frances.

Luckily the ISBN number stays with the book, so I was easily able to use it to upload my e-book.

3. I read the legals

Wherever you decide to publish your book next, or whoever with, look at the contract or terms and conditions. Have a thorough read, google whatever you need to and speak to whoever you need to. It might seem straightforward but unless you are a book law expert in your country of publication, there can be surprises or disappointments down the line. I’m not a lawyer, but it’s certainly worth ensuring that you retain ALL of the rights to your own work.

If you haven’t you might need to speak to a lawyer at this point. I do know an author who can’t reissue her own work because the original publisher arranged the contract so that they kept the rights.

Check over your current contract, agreement and even correspondence to ensure everything is in order and that you are good to move onto your next chapter (if you’ll pardon the pun).

4. I gave my e-book the once over

When I got the e-book file back, I gave it a quick once-over. For that I downloaded Calibre, a programme for your PC that lets you read and edit e-books.

Get your free e-book editor

My e-book was coded with HTML, previously I have worked with e-books that were coded with XML. If you don’t know coding and you want to make amends, you may need to hire a developer. In my case, I only needed to add the ISBN number back in.

5. What about your paperback copies?

For now the paperback copies of How to Leave a Group Chat are still available on Gardners. When I get the digital manuscript back, I intend to put those onto lulu.com as well, because it distributes it to Gardners again.

I hope that was helpful. If you’d like to feature on the All about Digital Marketing blog, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. Don’t forget to subscribe.

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So last week I made the papers, and it wasn’t quite as I expected. Rewind to a couple of weeks ago, I went to Aldi. I like Aldi, the Special Buys keep life exciting. But amongst the solar powered light sets and dog toys, there was one item that caught my attention. The Easy Home 3-in-1 free-standing toilet seat holder.

What’s so amazing about a toilet seat holder you ask? Well, this one has a small tray on top, to hold your phone, to hold your phone whilst you are doing your business in the toilet.

I wrote a book about smartphone use called How to Leave a Group Chat, and we’ve entered a time where the world is finally calling time on screen time, so I was shocked that Aldi would sell an item that encourages phone use. I thought it was an oversight on their part, however I also found it amusing, and a bit of a gimmick. Long before smartphones existed you could buy other jokey bathroom products such as toilet golf and toilet basketball. My main point of interest was that it was relevant to my book, How to Leave a Group Chat, and the discussion around smartphone use. I took a photo. I posted said photo on social media.

My post didn’t actually say very much (maybe a picture really does say a thousand words), and I was also happy that on that particular visit there were a lot of small children shopping and none of them were being pacified with screens. So I said that. That’s relevant to my research too. I hoped it’d be a small talking point.

Then someone added me to social. Kennedy News and Media wanted to talk to me about the toilet roll holder. Brilliant! We had a little interview.

In my mind this was a light hearted interview about a gimmicky product at Aldi which encourages smartphone use, with a few more serious overtones that would be a way into discussing the wider issue of smartphone use – and my book, of course! I submitted some photos, some with my book, some without. It took over a week, so I began to think that no one would be interested.

Then my contact messaged to let me know that the article had been published. Great!

I’m not gonna lie, I was a bit jarred by the original title referring to me as an “anti-addiction author”. I don’t understand how anyone can be anti-addiction, because addiction is an illness. I did request one media outlet changed their title, and they obliged. It wasn’t that the news agency did anything wrong necessarily, but rather that my words were interpreted in a way that I hadn’t meant them to be. The interview also happened pretty instantly so there was no time for me to think about this and plan answers, and in my experience often if you don’t pounce, you miss the mouse. The focus of the final article was on my opinion of the toilet roll holder and didn’t lead to a discussion about smartphone use in a lot of detail. My book was named and I as the author, but it wasn’t quite the publicity that I wanted. The photos used were only of me too, and not the ones featuring my book - assuming they were sent on, it’s for each newspaper to decide which images to add to their articles. Newspapers have the power to rewrite the press release and make it their own – here’s a little secret, many don’t, or they make minimal changes.

At the same time, the agency interviewed me, wrote up the article and distributed it to outlets with minimal effort on my part, which is a good thing because I’ve worked my arse off chasing leads. And all because of a social post. I’m interested to see how this plays out, and if I get any sales from it.

How can you get picked up by the media?

Posting something interesting or different online is one way to get noticed and picked up by the media, and you might be lucky. But in most cases, you’ll be the one approaching them. Here are some things you can try.

• Send your chosen media outlet a press release directly – I already wrote a blog detailing how to do this.

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• Search social media with the hashtag #journorequest – Twitter is a hotbed for this.

• sourcebottle.com is a website that posts requests from all kinds of media outlets – everything from big papers and TV channels to bloggers and podcasts, so it’s worth having a look to see if any of the listings are relevant to you. Similar sites include qwoted.com and muckrack.com.

• Monitor call-outs on media sites such as Google Alerts, Haro and Talkwalker (which after a quick Google might have changed to Lumen).

What can you do if a news piece about you or your business isn’t quite what you envisioned?

• Request changes are made – you can contact the agency or the outlet where the story appears.

• Pull the piece if it’s likely to do more harm than good.

• Consider how you’d handle it differently next time.

If you’d like to feature on the All about Digital Marketing blog, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. Don’t forget to subscribe.

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This week I was all set up for a guest post. A decent blog, I emailed the guest for a bio. Then I read the next blog on my list. Two different people, two different companies, two different countries. One tone of voice. One very similar structure.

• Intro starting with a time period

• Introducing the company

• A heading

• Data introduced - referencing “Ahrefs” at the same point

• What this means...etc.,

I state very clearly on my submissions blog that I don’t accept AI generated work. Unfortunately, due to the times that we are living in, I can’t guarantee that nothing has slipped through the net. I can only trust my instincts, and if I think that something has had AI involvement, I won’t be publishing it. I might be wrong, but I’d happily be wrong and keep the quality of my blog high. There’s no value in spending my time putting together a mediocre blog, and you eventually will get bored of reading it.

Not every marketer or business owner is a writer, and that is okay. I have worked with some great businesses to heavily edit their work and turn their case studies into well-written blogs.

I might have been wrong about those two blogs. The LAST thing that I want to do after having accepted a post is turn around and retract that. This is the first time that that has happened, I really hope that it will be the only time. I don’t call out AI involvement unless I am absolutely certain that this is the case.

It seems like I was right about at least one of these blogs. And the other, although the submitter told me he didn’t use AI, registered as 100% AI on the Pangram AI detector that has just integrated into the platform.

But do you REALLY not accept AI work on your blog?

To those of you who are hearing what I am saying, the heading above is stupid or pointless. But with AI having been thrust upon us so strongly, and embraced by so many so quickly, my words are not registering with everyone. Potential bloggers have asked me if I REALLY don’t accept AI work. I have been asked how much AI involvement is acceptable (None!), and the one potential guest blogger that I queried told me that he made all the points himself (mate, giving points to an LLM doesn’t count as writing).

I had another guest blogger tell me that he was surprised that I actually read through his work and edited it – he thought I would run his piece through an AI system, even though I have clearly stated on my submissions blog that I would never do that.

I started my All About Digital Marketing blog because I have fourteen years of communications and marketing experience, and there are a plethora of people who have asked me to explain marketing to them. Some of them I have sat down and explained the basics to, but marketing is a huge topic (there is a reason why you can do a three-year marketing degree) and I am time poor. Realistically, I can’t explain everything in marketing to everyone individually. So I started a blog instead, to share real knowledge and well-written, authentic, human work. As time went on, I thought that it would be a great opportunity to open up my blog to other marketers and businesses, share their knowledge too and give them some free publicity in return. And it is a great thing, but AI does not fit into the picture here.

Speaking of pictures

I had another potential guest blogger tell me that he had the legal right to use an AI generated image. No one has the legal right to use an AI generated image. No one has the right to use something that they didn’t create by something that was likely trained on stolen work. Of course, I then questioned the legitimacy of his text and pointed out the flaws in the image (I also do graphic design). He didn’t send me a reply.

If you are after some low budget or free images for your work, I wrote a blog about how to acquire those legally too.

But you have articles about AI on your blog

AI is here, it’s not going anywhere soon, and at the rate that our technology is evolving it’ll develop and change. As a Marketer I need to know about it. As a fast-moving technology, we need to understand it, challenge it and use it wisely, or we’ll end up in a mess just like we did with smartphones and social media (it’s already happening). Perhaps AI can help find medical breakthroughs or make processes easier. As a content writer, for me, in this area of work it’s unneeded. My brain is Chat LMG, I have been churning out words since I was small and I have perfected my craft. I can understand the industry I am in, the instructions given to me and all those little nuances that allow me to add the human touch to everything that I write. I use real words to share real knowledge, ideas and stories. I’m not generating mediocre texts that spit out stolen work.

So please, send me your submissions, but keep it real. In the great Ronny Chieng’s words, I want solid articles from “people with substance”, not weak articles from “people with shallow knowledge”. I’d rather take the time to heavily edit a blog post with a unique edge than spend precious time uploading AI slop to a bland blog.

If you’d like to feature on the All about Digital Marketing blog, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. Don’t forget to subscribe.

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The AI bubble is starting to burst. There is opposition to data centres that are being planned, now that we are realising how much space they take up, resources they use, pollution they cause and noise they make. And according to this week’s guest blogger, AI also makes marketing harder.

Charles Liu is the founder and Marketing Guru of Cubic Promote, a Sydney-based promotional products and custom apparel business he’s been building since 2005. When he’s not thinking about branding, or the next big shift in marketing technology, he’s at home in Sydney with his two kids, two dogs — Coco the Bichon and Peanut the Cavoodle — and a healthy curiosity about where the world is headed.

Over to Charles…

For the last two years, we’ve been told that AI will make marketing easier. In some ways, that’s true. It’s now quicker to create content, do research, and come up with ideas. Production costs are also going down.

But as someone who has run a business for over 20 years, I haven’t found that AI makes marketing easier. It’s made it harder, because its more competitive than ever.

That might sound strange coming from someone who actively uses AI tools, produces content, participates in podcasts, contributes to media commentary and embraces new technology. But here’s the reality: because AI can create too much content, you spend the time you might have saved doing even more work.

Content Is No Longer Scarce

For most of marketing history, creating content cost money. Writing articles took time. Designing graphics took skill. Video production required resources. Publishing at scale was difficult. AI changed all of that almost overnight.

Today, any business can create articles, social posts, videos, emails and marketing campaigns at a volume that would have been impossible a few years ago due to the time, cost and resources required. This doesn’t necessarily mean better quality content is being created, or that your marketing is better. If anything, the result is more noise and content that is becoming more generic – you also risk a backlash online.

Many of us are seeing the volume of what we are making, rather than what we are actually releasing into the world. We feel pressured to be more active across multiple channels. AI has created a race. The moment one business increases its presence, competitors feel pressure to do the same. What was once considered exceptional marketing activity quickly becomes the new baseline.

Founder Visibility Triumphs Over AI

One thing that has surprised me is how much more valuable human visibility has become. It is the antidote that cuts through mass AI consumption. Three years ago, I spent very little time on podcasts or media outreach. Today, both play an important role in our marketing strategy. Creating these content assets takes a lot of time to do correctly. AI has forced me to do this to remain relevant, hence making marketing a lot harder. Customers increasingly want to know who they’re buying from.

• They want to hear the founder speak.

• They want to understand the people behind the business.

• They want evidence that a company exists beyond its website.

• They love to know the juicy details and fun anecdotes behind the brand.

The return of genuine storytelling and giving customers insight into how your business works behind the scenes is one way to remain relevant and stand out in an AI world. When any company can make articles, social posts, and emails, the people behind the business set it apart.

We’ve had customers contact us who already knew our business before we answered the phone. Some had discovered us through referrals. Others mentioned our social media presence. Some had listened to our podcasts.

Many had researched us extensively before making contact. The interesting part is that by the time they reached out, much of the trust-building had already happened. The customer wasn’t simply finding us. They were validating us.

So What Does this All Mean?

AI hasn’t made marketing simpler. It has made the cost of creating content cheaper while making the cost of earning attention much higher. Publishing more is no longer enough because every competitor can do exactly the same thing.

The businesses that stand out won’t necessarily be the ones producing the most content. They’ll be the ones building the most trust. Founder visibility, genuine stories, behind-the-scenes insights and consistent proof that real people stand behind the brand have become competitive advantages that AI cannot easily replicate.

Ironically, the more AI-generated content that floods the internet, the more valuable authentic human connection becomes. For consumers, that’s a positive shift. They have more ways than ever to evaluate the businesses they buy from. For marketers, however, the job has become significantly harder. Success is no longer about creating more content. It’s about giving people a compelling reason to trust you.

One challenge for marketers now is that AI is changing things faster than experts can update their advice.

1. The pace of change means tactics that worked a few years ago may no longer be as effective today.

2. The channels have changed.

3. The algorithms have changed.

Customer behaviour has changed and therefore customers need new reasons to trust an organisation, and businesses need new ways and reasons to stand out.

Thank you Charles! If you’d also like to feature on the All about Digital Marketing blog, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. And don’t forget to subscribe.

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Don’t let my constant social media posting and other projects fool you, I’ve been doing a lot of job hunting lately and I have never known the hiring landscape to be as dire as it is now. Very often marketing and communications professionals (and everyone in between) are hired by a business who has little clue what we do – a gap that this very digital marketing blog is trying to bridge. I’m coming up against the same faux pas, frustrations and facepalm moments again and again, and I am seeing the same grievances being aired on LinkedIn, so I know that I am not alone. So, as a marketing and communications professional with 14 years of experience (the very reason I started this blog in the first place!), let me talk you through how to find the best and brightest commsies who will make your business shine.

List your salary

Listen businesses, stop this silly guessing game! If you want someone who is good, do your research, see what companies are offering for the equivalent role and list your price clearly on the job description. I have been rejected for job opportunities because I didn’t guess the correct salary – and there’s not always a box on the form where I can let you know that I am willing to talk. Many, many moons ago I applied to Mothercare, they asked me to guess a salary and then rejected me because I overestimated by £2,000. I called them to ask for feedback, and as soon as I said that I’d drop, I was invited to an interview. Equally, I have passed on opportunities because a salary wasn’t listed, or because one was listed that was too low. So please do your research and save both of us this additional stress. My answer will always be that I trust the business I am applying to to offer me a salary that fairly reflects my extensive skills and experience.

Be flexible

Marketing is a job that you can, on the whole, do from anywhere. There’s no need to be rigid about office attendance days. It makes sense for the marketer to come in for important meetings or to host events, it makes no sense to have bums on seats for the sake of bums on seats. Inflexibility is screening out some of your best talent and they tend to be working mums, carers and people with disabilities who find it harder to attend the office or function there.

Whilst we are talking about geography and proximity, I was rejected for a job because a hiring team in Berlin didn’t recognise that I live in a commuter town just outside London. All they saw was that I don’t live in London, so I was automatically discounted. Google Maps is on every web browser and commuter expectations are different around the world (as you’re asking, I’d expect up to 1.5 hours each way), so double-check that too before saying no.

Be forthcoming with reasonable adjustments

Most companies I have applied to have that clause on the application that they welcome disabled applicants and ask if they should need anything. Not every company goes further by including a field on the form for candidates to actually request reasonable adjustments. Some companies don’t even have a clue what reasonable adjustments are or should look like. Disabled candidates are legally (in the UK) entitled to adjustments, and they shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to secure these. Include a field and be guided by your candidates if you are uncertain. It might provide some reassurance that you won’t automatically screen them out just for being who they are.

Be precise

I’ve trudged through exceptionally long job descriptions which list the same criteria over and over in different ways. Firstly, for you it’s one job description, for me it’s one of hundreds. Secondly, in the modern age I have to be alert for AI, so whereas before I’d condense the main criteria down sensibly, today I have to guess what your AI system such as Workday or Successfactors will reject me for. The process is exhausting enough as it is without me having to walk on eggshells and second-guess.

Be proportionate

If you’re hiring for a temporary role, perhaps just accept a CV rather than making candidates complete a long application form. It’s a lot of work to put in for a position that’s 6, 9, 12 months long - only to have to go back to square one once the job is over.

Use people before AI

My record rejection time for a position was 3 minutes, at night. Another position that I spent hours perfecting and aligning a form for rejected me ten minutes after submitting. It’s horrible doing application after application not even knowing if a human will read it, or if you’ll receive an automatic rejection because you used one wrong word. Some companies are declaring that they are using AI to filter applications, and this is a start. But in the past it was rare to see the same job descriptions being posted again and again for a year straight, so I’d reassess your priorities, I am not sure that AI is doing your business any favours here.

Verbal reasoning tests

If I have proven in my application that I meet the criteria, why am I being asked to do GCSE maths comprehension questions? The colour of Jane’s postbox on the fourth floor has no bearing on my ability to transform your internal communications function. These tests also set up neurodiverse candidates with conditions such as dyslexia to fail. As always, if anyone reading this has a different perspective and you would like to share your insight into verbal reasoning tests and why they are good, please get in touch.

Marketing and Communications Professionals don’t NEED to be experts in any one field

By definition, we are the promoters. We come into a field and learn from the business, uncovering what is good, what would make customers use a businesses services or what would bring colleagues together. We are fluid and capable of researching, learning and being detectives. I have worked across tourism, aviation, freight and logistics, construction, SaaS, entertainments, retail and the British Civil Service. I also have a healthy knowledge of many areas that I haven’t worked within yet due to my general interests and nerdy desire to learn, plus I have taught myself how to use lots of different tools and software. Please don’t pigeon hole us or conjure up an unrealistic picture of the perfect marketer that most of us can never be.

Be human and give feedback

Job hunting can take months, and in the current climate easily over a year. It’s demoralising, dehumanising and unnerving. Behind many applications are human beings in a difficult situation. Please take some time to offer them some feedback – it could easily be made part of your CSR objectives. Feedback can make all the difference in the world to someone who is down on their luck and help them succeed.

What did I miss? Leave your comments below. And to all my fellow job seekers, I wish you the best of luck in your job search and hope that you find something soon.

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I have some exciting news to share. This Wednesday, from 8pm (GMT) my first spoken word show is airing on community radio station Radio Dacorum! It’s been months in the making and I have a very talented bunch of writers and poets lined up to talk about writing. I’m actually on the hunt for more guests - you have to be from the Dacorum/Hemel Hempstead area of England to take part, because it’s a community radio station. If you are – please fill in the submission form.

My entry into radio began a few years ago at work when my colleague, friend and broadcaster Ian Oogly said we should have a work radio station and he knew how to set it up. This was an exciting project, one that had us in the UK and Ireland officially branded as the cool cluster. So I’m going to share with you why having your own radio station can be a boost to your business.

You can reach everybody

In my previous job we were widespread around England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Some worked on-site, some remotely, some did hybrid and some were rarely in one place as they drove freight around the country. Of course, I had colleagues around the world, and they were tuning in too.

You can communicate with people who are listening, not looking

Not all jobs require staring at a screen. Similarly, if you are a customer-facing business such as a shop, your customers will be walking around and looking at products. Radio gives you the ability to engage with these colleagues and customers on another level. Many shops play music anyway, why not make it a radio station and add to your assets?

Your communications can be more dynamic

How many times have you sent out countless instructions and reminders, only for people to still be asking for information as the deadline hits? Radio jingles are a great way to distribute bite-size information throughout the day and gently push reminders to colleagues without swelling their inboxes or expecting managers to repeat things more than they need to. It’s a great medium to re-enforce messaging that’s already going out in emails, on signage screens and via word of mouth.

Colleagues can connect with each other

Locally we encouraged colleagues to request songs and even host their own shows such as the Friday Playlist, and different departments got together to put together pieces about the different projects that they were working. This helped colleagues across the business get to know other areas. Even the CEO’s quarterly update could easily be played to all colleagues on the station.

Radio is fun

Our radio station branded us as the cool cluster, and other countries across the business wanted in. There was no question that we’d host virtual global events such as the company pride week and diversity week on our station, and it was so cool to see colleagues from around the world taking part.

Don’t forget, if you do introduce a station, be mindful of colleagues who need quiet to focus and work. Not everyone will want to listen to everything at the same time, so ensure that there are quiet areas in an office and ask staff to use headphones.

My new spoken words show Your Words starts from Wednesday 8^th July, from 8pm on Radio Dacorum. If after reading this you’re interested in setting up an internal radio station at work, get in touch.

To feature on All About Digital Marketing and share your marketing or business expertise, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. And don’t forget to subscribe.

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Have you ever thought about the fonts you use, and how they can be an asset to your marketing? This week’s guest blogger might just give you pause for thought. Shubham Singh Patel, an experienced digital marketer, developer & the founder of Trending Tags Pro. With over five years of experience in SEO and algorithmic analysis, he builds AI-based SaaS tools that optimize metadata structures. When he’s not helping creators and major brands worldwide boost their organic visibility, he keeps his mind calm and stable with a daily meditation and spends his time gardening or in nature.

Over to Shubham…

Most growth marketers spend weeks tweaking ad copy, adjusting budgets, and redesigning landing page layouts. Yet, they completely overlook the visual vehicle delivering their message typography.

In crowded digital feeds, font styling is not just an aesthetic choice. It is a core structural mechanic that dictates how long a user stays on a page, how they absorb information, and whether they take action. When digital content fails to convert, marketers blame the product or the offer. In reality, the culprit is often poor text hierarchy that strains the reader’s eyes.

Here is a practical, visual look at how tailored typography optimizes digital content performance, drives engagement, and acts as a direct user acquisition tool.

1. Pattern Interruption in Algorithm-Driven Feeds

Standard social media interfaces and search layouts use uniform system fonts to maintain cross-platform consistency. When every competitor uses the identical native text structure, consumer eyes glaze over it. This creates a psychological blind spot known as digital text fatigue.

To capture attention today, brands must leverage visual pattern interruption. By integrating custom typography elements like suddenly shifting to a bold, high-contrast text block a brand instantly disrupts the uniform visual pattern of a scrolling user.

At TrendingTagsPro we have observed that stronger visual hierarchy can help improve user attention and engagement in crowded digital environments. It captures immediate user attention without requiring a higher advertising spend.

2. Maximizing Content Scannability and Dwell Time

Modern internet users do not read every single word online, they scan. If a paragraph looks like a massive wall of text, the user experiences cognitive overload and bounces. Optimized typography addresses this issue by improving content scannability through a strict visual hierarchy using three main pillars.

Bold, heavy-set headers chunk data into digestible pieces, instantly highlighting the core value propositions.

Keeping line spacing between 1.5 and 1.8 prevents visual clutter and drastically reduces reading strain on mobile screens.

Restricting paragraphs to a maximum width of 650 pixels keeps the human eye moving smoothly from line to line without losing place.

3. The Emotional Psychology of Typography Choices

Typography is the body language of online text. Before a user reads the first sentence, the typeface tells them whether your brand is professional, casual, authoritative, or sketchy.

Clean, Geometric Sans-Serif Fonts (e.g., Arial, Inter, Roboto)

These communicate modern efficiency and technical authority. They work perfectly for SaaS platforms and digital marketing tools because they are simple, highly legible, and free of decorative hooks.

Playful, Casual Fonts (e.g., stylized tattoo fonts, brush scripts, Comic Sans)

These establish a fun, highly personal, or creative vibe. While a B2B tech agency shouldn’t use them, they are extremely effective for standing out in Instagram bios, lifestyle branding, or creative portfolios.

4. Typography as a Core Accessibility and SEO Metric (Good vs. Bad Design)

Good design is accessible design. Search engines now place immense weight on user experience metrics, including font legibility. If a website uses a tiny 12px font size with poor contrast against the background, search engine crawlers flag it as non-mobile-friendly.

Upgrading your core font size to at least 16px or 18px for body text, and ensuring stark contrast (like dark gray text on a white background) eliminates physical barriers to reading.

Conclusion -

Typography adjustment is not just a cosmetic upgrade, it is a one-time structural optimization that yields continuous rewards. By focusing on layout scannability, font contrast, and psychological alignment, you can significantly boost your click-through rates and scale organic user acquisition without expanding your monthly marketing budgets. Fixing your typography might just be the highest-ROI optimization choice you make this quarter.

Thank you Shubham! To feature on All About Digital Marketing and share your marketing or business expertise, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. And don’t forget to subscribe.

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Online reviews, after the birth of TripAdvisor (if there was anything en masse earlier let me know...perhaps ratemyteachers.com) they are everywhere all at once. I wrote a post in 2024 about reviews and why they are important, and they are. But there’s another side to the story, and after a few recent incidents, I thought I’d share some thoughts.

I’d love to know your thoughts on online reviews as well.

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1. Negative online reviews can be removed

At the end of May, workers from a company called the Artificial Lawn Company (based in Kent, England) caused a noise disturbance in my street. In England, there are regulations regarding when “noisy works” can be carried out. And this company breached these by working at a neighbouring home outside of the hours that such works were permitted in my county. Not only did they breach these rules, but I complained about the company for the exact same reason in 2024, and the person who emailed me was the same person that I spoke to on that Saturday. He was standoffish and told me, to paraphrase, that he was aware of the rules and would continue doing the work anyway.

I left a negative online review for the company on yell.com, a popular online review site, which was accurate, and the Artificial Lawn Company challenged this. I sent evidence to yell.com who, although they agreed with me that my online review was accurate, made the decision to pull my negative online review for the reason that I was not a customer, despite the fact that the criteria to leave a review is “based on a genuine first-hand experience of engaging with a business within the last 12 months... the reviewer must have directly engaged with the business”. I did engage with this business only a month ago, and I have evidence that this engagement is genuine and first-hand.

If negative online reviews are liable to be removed at the request of the company who have caused upset, and the person who wrote the online review can prove that it’s genuine, does this not undermine the integrity of online reviews? And should reviews only be for customers, or should they be for others who are impacted by such companies as I was by the Artificial Lawn Company? In a world which is increasingly being hollowed out by AI, this might be one of the only avenues left in which people affected by the actions of companies have to make their voices heard.

2. Online reviews can be fake

I was left a negative online review on Facebook by someone who I’ve never met and didn’t even know existed until I saw their review. Their account suggested that they do good things (like take care of their children and raise money for autism charities), so it’s very possible that they might have been hacked. I have a Facebook author profile, and I didn’t know that I had online reviews turned on by default. As I am not someone who is running a business, it wasn’t something that I gave any thought to. I’d prefer anyone who has had read my book How to Leave a Group Chat to leave a review on Amazon, or my Goodreads page, or wherever they might have bought the book from.

Anyway, as this online review has nothing to do with me and doesn’t even describe my book accurately – How to Leave a Group Chat is a non-fiction book about smartphone use and communications, so there are no “pacing issues” or “pointless journeys”. I reported it to Facebook. And their bots decided “In this case, we did not remove the content that you reported”.

In my experience, when AI is involved in decisions of this nature, they are wrong. I was booted off Substack during my very early days (long before I launched All About Digital Marketing), and I went round the houses to find a contact for a human who could confirm that it was a mistake. Facebook also put me in Facebook jail recently, only to reverse their decision, and told me it was fine when I reported corn on their site.

I appealed the Facebook bot’s decision regarding the online review of course. I also worked out how to turn the review function off on my Facebook author profile. If I did actually need online reviews, it would have been more of a bugbear than it actually was for me, but I still don’t want Facebook to be let off the hook.

In short, poor decisions made by AI are undermining the value of online reviews, and of our online experiences overall.

3. We’re being asked to review EVERYTHING

Every week I attend meetings held by my local writer’s group (if you’re into any kind of writing, do yourself a favour and subscribe to their Substack). I confirm my attendance through meetup.com, and every week, meetup.com asks me to leave an online review of every single meeting I have attended!

I think I started attending meetings in 2019, so I am no newbie and I absolutely wouldn’t have been involved with this talented bunch of wordsmiths for as long as I have if their meetings were no good. I get it, meetup.com wants to rank different groups to advertise them to site members, but I should only need to provide one online review, I really don’t need to review every single . Also, meetup.com’s pestering doesn’t fit with the community nature of our wonderful little group. I don’t need to continually rate it like a school inspector rates a school.

Restaurant recommendations are helpful, and online reviews of places that I am visiting or staying are great for helping me get an idea of how the land lies. But I really don’t need to review everything every time I experience it.

What do you think about online reviews? Where do you find them helpful, or a hindrance? Comment below.

To feature on All About Digital Marketing and share your marketing or business expertise, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. And don’t forget to subscribe.

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Be honest, how good are you at planning your projects so that they run smoothly and cost less to implement? Today’s blog might just be the kick you need to rethink your planning strategy and stop skipping one essential step.

This week’s guest blogger is Andra Ciucescu. She’s the founder of Pinpoint, a marketing consultancy in Romania that helps small and mid-sized businesses reduce risk by getting the strategic groundwork right before they spend on execution. Andra works as a marketing consultant and Fractional CMO and has around 16 years of experience across B2B and B2C, working with manufacturers, energy companies, real estate businesses, financial services and other founder-led companies.

Outside work, she is usually choosing oversized earrings, making something with her hands, spending time outdoors, or quietly analysing how people think, decide and explain themselves.

Over to Andra…

In my experience, a lot of marketing work should start long before anyone writes a word, designs a logo, builds a landing page, or launches an ad. It should start with the brief.

A marketing brief is the document, or sometimes just the framework, that helps everyone understand what a business is trying to achieve, who the work is for, and why it matters. It sounds simple. In small and mid-sized businesses, it is often the step everyone rushes through because the team is already late, the owner is impatient, the agency is waiting, the designer needs direction, and someone wants to just get it out there.

I understand the pressure. I work as a marketing consultant, mostly with founders and small or mid-sized companies, and I know how quickly marketing turns into a pile of urgent tasks. Still, this is exactly where a good brief matters. It quietly prevents expensive things: three rounds of corrections that could have been avoided, paid campaigns pointing at the wrong people, a designer guessing the business logic, a developer building a structure around unclear priorities, a junior marketer posting because “we need to be active,” and a founder spending money while feeling, somewhere in the background, that the whole thing is slightly off.

Most of my work comes down to reducing risk for the business owner. A good brief is one of the simplest ways to do that.

I want to walk through this using a real project I led. I have kept the company and its partners anonymous, because the point here is the working logic. The project involved a European window manufacturer, a major supplier change, two new product lines, a repositioning effort, and a lot of marketing work that had to be coordinated across website, design, advertising, search, newsletters, sales materials, partner communication, physical samples, internal teams and external suppliers.

The example is from manufacturing, although the principle applies much more widely. An author preparing a book launch, a florist trying to attract wedding clients, a podcaster building a sponsorship deck, a software company launching a new feature, a consultant writing a website page. The questions stay surprisingly similar. The answers change.

A business that had changed quietly

A few years ago, I took over marketing for a European window manufacturer. The company sold through dealers, construction firms and export partners. That was the real business. Most of the commercial value came from companies buying in volume, returning over time, and needing a reliable supplier relationship.

The firm’s communication still spoke mainly to homeowners: the website used language that made sense for someone buying a few windows for a house, the blog answered consumer questions, and the call-to-action logic was closer to retail than to partnership. The structure did not reflect the way the business actually made money anymore.

This happens more often than people think. A company evolves gradually, sales patterns change, the best customers become different from the original audience, and marketing keeps repeating an older version of the business because nobody stops to rewrite the frame.

In this case, the first brief we needed was not for a designer or a web developer. It was for the business itself.

Who were we actually speaking to now? Which customers mattered most? What kind of partner did the company want more of? What needed to be explained before a dealer or developer could trust the company? What had to change in the website, the sales materials, the product pages, the newsletters and the ads so they all supported the same commercial direction?

Those questions created the foundation for everything that came later.

The bigger change: a new supplier and a real repositioning

Later, the company made a much larger move. It changed its core material supplier and entered a long-term partnership with a premium German one. Two new product lines were developed around that partnership.

This was not a cosmetic update. It affected positioning, pricing expectations, technical proof, production logic, partner confidence, product naming, market education, sales conversations and the story the company needed to tell.

A supplier change at that level touches much more than the product catalogue: new product names, new logos, new product pages, new messages for partners, new advertising logic, new search priorities, new newsletter sequences, new sample boxes, new visuals, new banners inside the production hall. Plus: rebranded vehicles, updated sales arguments, clearer explanations for customer service and a communication sequence that helped the market understand the change gradually.

At that point, “we need a campaign” would have been a dangerous brief. The real task was much larger. The company needed its marketing and communications to explain its new structure to the relevant stakeholders.

Where vague briefs become expensive

A vague brief often sounds harmless at first.

“Make us a nice logo.”

“Refresh the website.”

“We need to be more active on social media.”

“Do something for the launch.”

“We need ads.”

These requests feel practical because they name a deliverable, but in reality they are vague. When there is a marketer involved, they are usually the one to develop a real brief from the vague request. But the marketer isn’t always involved from the beginning and when too many cooks are involved, work can become misaligned because the brief never carried any business logic.

A better brief starts before marketing

In that manufacturing project, I began with the business reality. I spoke to the owner, production, sales and other internal teams. I looked at what the company wanted to become commercially, what type of partners mattered most, which products carried the strongest future potential, what the supplier change meant, what had to be explained to the market, and where the old communication no longer matched the company.

A simple principle helped a lot: in most businesses, a small share of customers, products or use cases creates a large share of the value. Once you identify that share, the brief becomes sharper. You stop speaking to a vague “everyone” and begin speaking to the people who actually matter for the next stage of the business.

Only after that can marketing make good decisions.

A product page becomes easier to structure, a logo becomes easier to brief, a newsletter becomes easier to write, a paid campaign becomes easier to filter, a junior marketer understands why a post matters, a sales team receives arguments they can actually use.

The brief becomes the translation layer between the business decision and the people who have to execute it.

The questions I ask before I brief anyone

A useful brief usually starts with more questions than people expect. I know this can feel slow, especially when everyone wants to see the page, the ad, the logo, the campaign, the deck or the article live already. Business owners are busy, teams are tired, suppliers are waiting. Marketing often arrives on the table when something already feels urgent.

That urgency is exactly the reason I ask the questions.

I start with the business reality. What changed in the company to create the need for this work? Is it a launch, a repositioning, a new market, a new customer type, a need to protect margin, a pressure to support sales, a need to look more credible, or a need to reduce confusion? What is the commercial priority underneath the task? Revenue, lead quality, trust, partner confidence, retention, market education, internal alignment, reputation, or a cleaner sales process? What would make this work useful six months from now?

The audience comes next. Who exactly needs to understand this? A buyer, a reseller, a developer, an installer, an architect, a partner, a journalist, a job candidate, an internal team, an existing client, someone comparing suppliers quietly before speaking to sales? What do they already know? What do they misunderstand? What makes them hesitate? What kind of proof makes their decision easier? What language do they use when they talk about this problem?

After that, the decision itself. What should become easier after this work exists? Asking for a quote, booking a call, trusting a new supplier, understanding why one product costs more than another, forwarding the material to a colleague, approving a budget, opening the next email, sharing the page with a partner, or continuing the conversation with sales. A page, a post or a logo can look polished and still fail to help anyone decide. This question keeps the work grounded.

There is also the offer itself. What are we really selling? What are the features, the advantages and the benefits? Which benefits are technical, which are commercial, which are emotional? What is genuinely different? What is simply expected in the category? What can we prove? What sounds stronger than the evidence we have? What needs checking with production, sales, customer service, finance or leadership before it goes public?

Then come the questions that save a lot of trouble later. Where does this asset sit in the buyer journey? Is it the first thing someone sees, or something they read after three conversations? What happened before this touchpoint? What should happen after it? Who will use this internally? Sales, customer service, the owner, a partner, a junior marketer, an agency, a recruiter, an account manager? What are the constraints: timeline, budget, technical limits, translations, stock, approvals, product availability, legal or compliance checks? Who approves the work? What would make it good? What would make it wrong?

Finally, I ask how we will know it worked. Sometimes that means a direct inquiry. Sometimes it means a better qualified lead, fewer repeated questions, faster sales conversations, stronger partner confidence, cleaner handover between teams, better search visibility, fewer corrections, or simply the fact that everyone finally uses the same explanation.

Inside my own thinking, I lean on a few quiet principles: the small share of customers that drives most of the value, the real job a customer is hiring the product to do, a simple risk check, clear and measurable objectives, the difference between a feature and a benefit, and small review cycles instead of one big push. I rarely need to put those names in the brief itself. The person doing the work needs something more practical: what we are trying to achieve, who it is for, what has to be true, what needs checking, what good looks like and what the next step is.

That is the value of a brief. It turns thinking into usable instructions.

Each role needs a different brief

Once the thinking was clear, I could brief the people who had to execute. This is where the difference became visible, because every specialist needed a different version of the same strategy.

For the graphic designer, the brief had to explain meaning. We were creating visual identities for two new product lines, and each product had a different role. One was positioned around premium aesthetics, light, comfort and a more elegant living experience, so the design direction could explore softer, more sensory visual cues. The other was positioned around engineering, structure, precision and long-term durability, so the design direction needed stronger, more geometric, more stable cues. I did not ask for “two nice logos.” I gave the designer the business logic behind the products, so creative decisions had a frame.

For the web developer, the brief had to explain structure. Which pages needed to change, in what order, which product hierarchy made sense, where the trust signals had to sit, how the new product logos had to appear across the site, how the partner pathway had to work, what needed to be visible for professional buyers, what content supported search, and where multilingual consistency mattered. The developer did not need the same emotional territory as the designer. He needed the architecture.

For the search and advertising teams, the brief had to explain intent. Which searches mattered commercially, which audiences looked relevant and produced weak leads, which product lines deserved priority, which claims had proof, which landing pages matched each campaign, and what a qualified inquiry looked like. Paid media can waste money very elegantly when the brief is vague.

For newsletters, the brief had to explain the relationship. Partners did not need a dramatic launch message. They needed to understand what was changing, why the new supplier mattered, what the new product lines meant, how this affected them, and what they could say further to their own clients. A newsletter brief is not simply “write an email.” It is a relationship brief.

For sales, the brief had to turn marketing into conversation. Salespeople needed product differences, proof points, objections, simple explanations, comparisons and language they could use naturally. The message had to travel from the website into real phone calls and meetings.

For customer service, the brief had to reduce improvisation. What information should they collect? How should they route a lead? What could they promise? What needed approval? How should they explain the difference between a business inquiry and a consumer one?

For a junior marketer, the brief had to be even clearer. Context, examples, approval points, quality criteria, recurring mistakes to avoid, where to find information, who to ask when something is unclear. A junior person can learn very fast when the system around them is clear. When the system is vague, they absorb confusion from everyone else.

For physical materials, like sample boxes, showroom materials, banners or vehicle branding, the brief had to connect the object with the commercial moment. What should a dealer understand in the first few seconds? What proof should the box carry? What should be instantly visible in the production hall? What should the vehicle communicate in traffic? The same strategy had to travel into very different formats.

That is why I treat the brief as a management tool. It protects the founder’s time, helps specialists make decisions independently, gives junior people a safer way to work, reduces corrections, and keeps the company from paying for disconnected activity.

Sequencing matters too

There was another important part of the project: I did not try to launch everything in one push.

The work needed phases. First, internal alignment and foundations: naming, positioning, product logic, visual direction, core messages. Then a quieter preparation phase: website updates, partner communications, sales materials, sample boxes, content library. Then the public launch across channels, with the market educated gradually. Then a consolidation phase, using real project photos, partner installations and continued communication.

This kind of phased work is useful because information is rarely complete at the beginning. Technical details evolve. Production timelines shift. Sales feedback changes priorities. A founder may approve the direction and still need time to see how it translates into real materials.

Working in smaller cycles let us draft, review, correct, approve and publish without letting the entire project freeze. It also gave the owner decisions in manageable pieces. In complex projects, a brief is rarely a single document. It becomes a living frame that keeps everyone aligned while the work moves.

What a good brief gives you

A good brief gives people something very simple and very valuable: a clear reason for the work.

It tells the designer why the symbol matters. It tells the developer why the page is structured that way. It tells the advertising team which intent is worth paying for. It tells the writer what the reader needs to understand. It tells sales what proof to use. It tells the junior what to check before publishing. It tells the founder what decisions are needed and which details can be delegated.

In the manufacturing project, the business had changed, the market needed to understand that change, and every touchpoint had to carry the same direction. Website, ads, newsletters, product names, logos, sample boxes, sales scripts, partner materials and internal communication all had different jobs. The underlying logic had to stay coherent.

That is what a brief does when it is written properly. It stops being an admin document and becomes the operating frame behind the work.

A simple place to start

Here is a practical place to start before briefing anyone:

• Who are we trying to reach?

• What changed in the business that created this need?

• What should this person understand, believe or do after seeing the work?

• What proof do we have?

• What is still an assumption?

• What would make this useful for sales, service, partners or internal teams?

• What would create confusion?

• Who needs to approve it?

• How will we know it worked?

These questions will not make marketing simple, because business is rarely simple. They make the work clearer. And clear work is easier to execute, easier to judge, easier to improve and much less expensive to correct.

For me, this is the real job behind a marketing brief. It reduces the risk of spending before thinking. It turns a founder’s intention into something a team can actually use. It gives the people doing the work the one thing they need most before they start: direction.

And if this is the kind of groundwork your business has been skipping, this is exactly the work I do at Pinpoint: getting the thinking clear before the spending starts, so the people you hire can do their best work with fewer guesses, fewer revisions and a much better understanding of what the business actually needs. Contact me at andra@pinpoint.ro.

Thank you Andra! To feature on All About Digital Marketing and share your marketing or business expertise, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. And don’t forget to subscribe.

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@louisaguiseauthorLive in the moment this summer and put your phone down. How to Leave a Group Chat is available at Waterstones, Amazon and all good bookshops. #booktok #booksoftiktok #howtoleaveagroupchat #popularpsychology #popularpsychologybook #putyourphonedown #booksbooksbooks #book #summervibes #1stjune #summerishere #newauthor #welshauthor #authorsoftiktok #writersoftiktok #welshwriter #iwritebooks #smartphoneuse #authorpost #bookpost #bookpromo #bluebook #blue #dancingrobot #authorlife #smartphoneaddiction #addictedtosmartphone #summerparty #bookparty #booksofinstagram #bookstobuy #travelread #communications #communicationsbooks

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Hello Reader! Your favourite Digital Marketing blogger has been busy setting up Woocommerce on her website so I couldn’t be happier to feature a guest blogger this week. And he’s a man who needs no introduction.

Over to Deepak…

I’m Deepak Shukla. I run Pearl Lemon, which basically grew out of trying things, breaking them, fixing them, then doing it again. Not some neat, polished system. More like a series of experiments that happened to work.

Outside of that, I’ve done Ironmans, and I tend to document things while they’re still messy. Mid-process, not after everything’s been wrapped up into a clean takeaway. That same habit sort of spills over into how I approach TikTok marketing as well.

Because it’s not just somewhere people mindlessly scroll to switch off anymore. It still does that, sure, but that’s not the whole picture now. People are searching. Properly searching. And once you notice that, it changes how you approach content. Even if nothing else about the platform looks different at first glance.

TikTok Isn’t Just Social Media Anymore

TikTok has started acting like a search engine. Not obviously. It still looks like an endless feed of videos. But behind the scenes, it’s trying to figure things out. What your video is about and who it’s for. Whether it should show up when someone types something in, or whether it belongs on the For You Page based on how people react to it.

So you’re not just posting something and hoping it lands anymore. You’re answering something. A question someone has already asked, even if you never see them ask it directly. And if your video lines up clearly enough with that, TikTok has a reason to push it. That’s the bit most beginners miss.

Searches on TikTok look surprisingly familiar too. Things like:

• how to start running

• easy recipes for beginners

• how to grow on TikTok

Nothing groundbreaking. But the shift from scrolling to searching, that’s the part that changes everything.

Why Most Beginners Don’t Get Views

Most people start by guessing. Fair enough. You think of something, record it, post it, then wait. And when nothing really happens, it feels random. Maybe even a bit frustrating.

But it’s usually not random. It’s just not connected to anything people are actively looking for.

A caption like “Watch this…” doesn’t really tell anyone anything. Not the viewer, not the platform. Compare that to something like “Beginner running tips if you’ve never exercised before.” Now it’s clear. There’s a person, a situation, a problem.

So instead of asking “what should I post,” the better question becomes… what are people already trying to find that I can actually help with?

How to Actually Get Found on TikTok

If you’re a total beginner, you can use these step to help you started.

Start With What People Are Searching

Those suggestions that pop up on the search bar aren’t random ideas. They’re based on real searches happening right now.

Type something broad like “running” and you’ll see it branch off into specifics. Beginner routines. Weight loss angles. Simple starting points.

At that stage, you’re not guessing anymore. You’re working with demand that already exists.

And if you click into those and scroll for a bit, patterns start to show up. Not in a neat, obvious way, but you’ll notice how direct people are. How quickly they get to the point. What kind of phrasing keeps coming up.

Use Simple, Repeatable Formats

This is the point where people start tying themselves in knots a bit. Trying to be “original” just to be different, which sounds good on paper but usually doesn’t land.

If you actually pay attention to what’s doing well, the same formats keep popping up. Over and over. It’s easy to follow and people get them straight away.

You’ll see things like:

• 3 mistakes beginners make

• how to start without quitting

• what I wish I knew before

Nothing fancy. But clear. And clarity tends to win.

Get to the Point

A solid idea can fall flat if it takes too long to get going. People decide fast. Sometimes within seconds.

So instead of easing into it, it usually works better to just say the thing upfront. Let the right person immediately recognise that this is for them.

Long build-ups sound nice in theory. In practice, they lose people.

Be Clear, Not Clever With Keywords

“SEO” tends to make people think they need to cram keywords into everything. Which isn’t really how TikTok plays it.

It’s more about how you actually talk about what you’re doing. The way you’d explain it to someone, not some over-optimised version of it. The platform is picking up your caption, yes, but also what you’re actually saying in the video.

So if you’re clear, genuinely clear, it has a much easier job understanding where your content fits. And who it should show it to.

Match Your Caption to Intent

There’s a temptation to be witty or vague in captions. Make it sound interesting instead of obvious. But most of the time, obvious works better.

If someone would realistically type a phrase into the search bar, and your caption matches that, you’re reinforcing the intent. You’re not dressing it up. You’re just meeting it directly. It might feel a bit plain. That’s fine. Plain works.

Use What You’re Already Doing

Running out of ideas doesn’t really happen once you shift how you think about content.

Because most of it can come from what you’re already doing. Things that didn’t work. Things that worked better than expected. Things you’d change next time. That’s more than enough to keep going.

Consistency Over Perfection

Some videos will do well. Others won’t. Sometimes there’s a clear reason. Sometimes there isn’t.

Don’t over analyse every post. It’s usually more useful to notice small patterns. Which topics get traction. Which formats feel easiest to repeat.

A simple structure helps here. Something like:

• one thing you learned

• one mistake

• one small result

You don’t need all three every time. Even one is enough.

Zooming Out

TikTok isn’t as complicated as it feels at the start. Most of it comes down to clarity and consistency over time.

Make it obvious what your content is about and who it’s for. TikTok’s job is to decide whether people respond to it.

And most people don’t struggle because it’s too hard. They struggle because they stop too early. Usually right before things start to click. Which, annoyingly, tends to happen later than you expect.

Thank you Deepak! Which social platforms have you had success with? Comment below or find out how you can be featured on the All About Digital Marketing blog.

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To feature on All About Digital Marketing, about any marketing or business expertise, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. And don’t forget to subscribe.

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I have a website, but until last weekend I never sold my books directly from it. Instead I used a work-around, creating single product pages (for SEO, obvs!) and linking them to the relevant sites where my paperback book, e-book and audiobook were sold. The dream was always to sell direct to consumer, but it seemed a little above my capabilities and daunting. Did I need to redo my website all over again? Did I need to abandon WordPress and create a whole new Shopify site? I dabbled with Shopify a few years ago but it seemed then a bit more rigid then and not too user friendly – if anyone has a Shopify site and wants to blog about it, get in touch!

As a consumer, I have left websites and purchased from another for the simple reason that I can’t quickly and easily purchase the service that I need directly through the site.I absolutely do not want to fill in a form to have someone get back to me lord knows when, or potentially have to pay over the phone with a credit card. But I had no idea where to begin with a product cart and payment system. And judging by the sheer number of small businesses that don’t have these – from dentists to printing services – I am not alone.

So listen up friends and I’ll tell you how to add Woocommerce to your website. I use WordPress with Elementor and it is very compatible with that. If you use a different CMS, these instructions should be broadly similar, but it might be worth having a google. This tutorial is suitable for people who know their way around WordPress, if you don’t, there are lots of tutorials available online to help you (hint - here’s another guest blogger opportunity!). And as Woocommerce has a lot of functionality, I’ll be going through the key things that you need, leaving plenty for you to discover.

To start

Install Woocommerce from your plugins and follow the prompts in the set up wizard. Once you have Woocommerce, it gives you a nice little checklist.

Customize your store

In my case, my product pages just matched my website theme, but it is possible to build your shop and website within the Woocommerce options. Click on Customize your store and you’ll be offered a variety of designs that you can customise.

Add your products

Body of the screen

Click Add your products, or click “Add new product” in the left-hand navigation bar. In true Wordpress style you’ll have a nice WYSIWYG editor where you can add a nice Product description (I added YouTube videos to mine too).

Below the WYSIWYG, there are more options.

General

Here you can set your price, and it should be set to your local currency. You also have the option to set a sale price, as well as a time duration for that sale price to apply, which is nice.

In the drop-down menu above your pricing fields, you can choose what kind of product you’d like to list. A simple product is standard, but the affiliate option allows you to link to other pages, which is great if like me you are selling audiobooks or e-books. There are also buttons which allow you to list a virtual or downloadable product.

If you have a lot of similar products, you can duplicate products to reduce the amount of manual inputting that you need to do.

Inventory

The Woocommerce inventory option allows you to input product codes and things like ISBN numbers for books, as well as track stock quantity.

Shipping

As the name suggests, this is where you can add sizes and weights, as well as confirm where you’ll be posting to and which kind of postage option you will use.

Linked Products

You can select products to link to the product you are currently listing, but note that they won’t appear until they are live on your site.

Attributes

I haven’t used this option personally, but it provides some fields for descriptive text for your item.

Advanced

Here you can rearrange the order of your items, add a little note for customers and enable reviews.

Social media

Below Advanced, on my dashboard, I have the options to promote my products across Pinterest, Reddit and Snapchat, which I have of course enabled. This might not be the case on every setup.

Product Short description

This is another WYSIWYG editor where you can add a short description of your product.

Left-hand menu

In the menu on the left-hand side, you can save your page as a draft or publish it, set your Product image – click on it to go through the usual WordPress upload process, or add an image from your Media Library.

Other images of your product can be added in the same way via the Product gallery option underneath. They appear in a row, so I’m unsure why WordPress has set up these options in this way.

Below the image options, you can add category tags. Create some categories that are relevant to your products. This is even more important if you have lots of products to list.

Get paid with Woopayments

There are a number of different payment methods that you can accept via your website. One easy method is Woopayments, which you can set up via their wizard. For each it’s worth reading the terms and conditions and deciding which method would work for you, as most online options do mandate a small charge for using the service.

Collect sales taxes

This one, I’ll admit, baffled me. Perhaps because here in Britain we don’t separate taxes, we only sell for a final price that includes the tax rate anyway (you see it on some online websites, but it’s something I’d gloss over). I clicked the option not to collect sales taxes and life went on. If you are living in a country such as America, you might want to pay closer attention to this.

Launch your store

To launch your store, click the “Site Visibility” tab under Settings, then click the Live radio button and save changes.

How to add your Woocommerce store to your homepage nav menu

In the left nav, under Appearance, you’ll find the Menus option. My Woocommerce store page was under the Product categories drop-down. Drag it into the menu wherever you see fit and click Save Menu.

Your individual products should be under the Products drop-down. If you wish you can add these to the menu in the same way.

Do you have an online shop? How have you made it successful? Comment below or find out how you can be featured on the All About Digital Marketing blog.

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To feature on All About Digital Marketing, about any marketing or business expertise, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. And don’t forget to subscribe.

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I use Facebook to promote my non-fiction book How to Leave a Group Chat, talk about issues related to the book (smartphone use) and, most recently, to promote my new poetry zines which are available on Vinted (and I am working my way round to other sites). I had a few groups connected to it, a back catalogue of content and I was finding the groups useful to promote this very blog.

Then, on Sunday 10th May 2026, like an AI magician had waved a digital wand - POOF! My Facebook account was suspended. The powers that be told me that I had violated the platform. I have no idea why - Lord AI doesn’t do explanations, and I don’t do anything outrageous on Facebook. I share images and photos of books and poetry and smartphones. It’s not even a personal place for me.

Some months ago (just before the recent court judgement against Meta) I reported corn on Facebook, hardcore corn and Lord AI took minutes to assess the situation and tell me that they wouldn’t show the corn video to anyone under 18, and that it was fine. If someone posting corn on Facebook gets a free pass, why did I have to “appeal” by sending Facebook a selfie and a copy of my passport? Just as Facebook has changed the meaning of the word Friend, they have also changed the meaning of the word Appeal.

It’s Wednesday the 13th May as I write this, and I am still in Facebook Jail even though Facebook’s Lord AI said that a resolution should be found in just over a day. But no, do not pass go, do not collect £200. And, because I am a small creator and marketer who depends on visibility and the proactiveness of Facebook groups (the right Facebook groups account for 7-15% of my blog views), I started anew with a new Facebook profile and group. All seemed to be going well, and then I was thrown back into Facebook Jail as I was trying to establish my new page for this blog.

Like anyone who has been thrust into Facebook Jail, I did some googling to work out why this has happened, and how I could perform my great escape, seen as Lord AI has done nothing to ease my plight. Brace yourself, the answer is underwhelming.

How to get out of Facebook Jail

1. Find Facebook on Instagram.

2. Send them a message explaining your Facebook Jail situation.

or

1. Find the Facebook App in the App Store (Google or Apple, it doesn’t matter).

2. Click on the drop down on the lower right that says App Support.

3. Copy the email address and send an email explaining your Facebook Jail situation.

For both solutions, you might not get an answer. If you are paid and verified. You might.

These two same solutions for escaping Facebook Jail came up in lots of videos, including the one that I have posted above from Daily CMO. This situation of having my Facebook account suspended brought home how volatile these platforms can be, how when you, as Daily CMO says, “play on a rented space” your data can disappear in an instant.

So, how to do you protect your digital assets and stay out of Facebook Jail?

Connect more than one Facebook account and admin to your page.

This tip is from our friend Daily CMO again, and I love it. I had a number of pages linked to my old Facebook account which I may, or may not, ever be able to access again. If I’d had a secondary account connected to my All About Digital Marketing page, I’d be able to access it still.

If you don’t want multiple accounts, perhaps you and your social media buddy could be added as admins to each others business managers, so if one of you loses your Facebook account, the other can give you access again when you have a new one.

Have your own website

Your own website is your own code. You, or your developer, can back-up the code ensuring that even if, god forbid, a provider like Wordpress went under, you could easily upload your content to a new host and start afresh. Every professional, marketer and business should have a website as standard anyway.

Build your own audience

Encourage followers on Facebook and your other social platforms. I always recommend that you are present on every social media platform, not only so you don’t miss out on any collaboration opportunities, but to try and maintain connections during times like this.

Have you ever been banished to Facebook Jail? Share your stories in the comments below?

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Name my new radio show!

I have a new project coming up! I’m going to be the host of a new spoken word show on Radio Dacorum, a radio station based in the Hemel Hempsted area (north of London) and we need a name. Please head over to the Radio Dacorum Facebook page to vote for a name and find out more.

Name my show

To feature on All About Digital Marketing, about any marketing or business expertise, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. And don’t forget to subscribe.

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As I am an author myself, I’m very excited to share a blog about book marketing this week! Amy Castello is the Client Success Manager for Adbassador, and when she’s not making marketing magic she’s reading, cooking ambitiously or trail running with her lovable rescue mutts Otis and Pearl. This week Amy is going to tell us all about why you should be making use of guest blog posts to promote your books, and other things of course.

Over to Amy…

Hi everyone, I’m Amy Castello from Adbassador, a marketplace for buying guest posts on trusted publisher sites. I do have a stake in this, but I’m not here to sell you our services. I pitched this article because I see authors every week missing out on a marketing channel that works well for books, yet hardly anyone is using it.

Before I dive in, I want to focus on book authors. I know many readers here are digital marketers, but book marketing has its own challenges, and paid ads for books are tough right now. If you coach authors or handle marketing for a publisher, you’ll still find this helpful.

The default book marketing stack

Most authors who pay for marketing use a mix of Amazon ads, Facebook or Instagram ads, and BookBub featured deals. These can all work. Amazon ads do well if your keyword research is strong. Facebook works if your ad creative is good. BookBub can drive sales, but only a few authors get accepted.

The issue isn’t that these channels don’t work. It’s that they all work the same way. You pay for attention, either per click or impression, and as soon as you stop paying, the traffic ends. Your book has to make sales during that short window.

Also, the cost per click keeps rising. In mid-2025, Facebook CPCs for book ads were about $0.80 to $1.80, depending on genre and country. Amazon PPC is pricey unless you target very niche keywords, so it only makes sense if you have a backlist or a series.

What a guest post actually does differently

A guest post on a popular blog in your niche brings a different kind of traffic. Here are three key points:

1. First, readers visit that blog because they’re interested in the topic. If you post on a mystery review blog, everyone reading it already likes mysteries. You don’t have to pay for their attention—the blog has already earned it. Facebook ads target people based on rules, but a niche blog reaches people who are truly engaged in that genre.

2. Second, your guest post stays online. A good post can attract organic search traffic for months or even years. For example, in our marketplace, the average post on a DR 30+ site still gets visits 14 months after it goes live. Paid ads don’t offer that kind of long-term reach.

3. Third, you get a back-link. Some blogs use no follow links, but most use follow links. Either way, it’s a visible endorsement from another site. This helps your author platform, your Amazon listing, and your own website if you have one.

What guest posts actually cost in 2026

These numbers come from real orders, not estimates. Here’s what we found from 608 completed orders on our marketplace:

For small genre blogs (DR 10 to 30), the median price is $35 to $85. These blogs are often run by one person and have 1,000 to 5,000 monthly readers. Turnaround is usually 3 to 7 days. Many won’t accept posts that seem too promotional, so your content needs to be genuinely helpful.

Mid-size blogs (DR 30 to 55) cost $120 to $300. They have more readers and stricter editorial standards, so expect them to reject weak pitches. These blogs are often the best choice for book authors because the audience is large enough to drive sales, but the blog still cares about matching the right topics.

Large blogs (DR 55+) often charge $400 and up, sometimes into the thousands. I don’t recommend starting here as an author. The cost per interested reader is usually higher than with mid-size blogs, since you’re paying for extra authority you may not need.

If you compare these prices to what you’d pay for the same number of truly interested readers on Facebook, guest posts are usually much more cost-effective.

How to pick a blog that actually converts for books

Most advice online about choosing guest post sites comes from SEO experts focused on link value. That’s not what you need. You want sites with readers who might actually buy your book. It’s a different filter.

What I look for when I am advising an author:

Look for real comments on posts—not just one-word replies like “great article,” but actual discussions. If the comments seem fake or automated, the readers probably are too.

Check if the blog recently posted about something similar to your book. For example, if they reviewed a thriller last month and you wrote a thriller, that’s a good match. But if the blog focuses on cozy mysteries and you wrote hard sci-fi, even a big audience won’t help—it’s the wrong fit.

Look for blogs where the author or reviewer has a clear, personal voice. These sites convert better for books. Pure SEO affiliate sites rarely work, even if their traffic numbers look good.

Here’s another tip: does the blog show book covers when mentioning books? It might seem minor, but blogs that display book covers attract readers who are looking for their next read. Blogs that only use stock photos tend to attract people who are just researching. These are very different types of readers.

Two examples from our marketplace

I’ll keep these examples anonymous since the authors didn’t agree to be case studies. One author paid $140 for a guest post on a mid-size thriller review blog. The post was about “how I researched my villain,” with no hard sell—just a link in the author bio. Over six months, they tracked 34 book sales from that post using a UTM link. That’s about $4 per sale on a $9 ebook. At the same time, their Amazon ads were costing about $7 per sale.

The second author did the opposite. They paid $280 for a post on a much larger general-interest blog. The blog had lots of traffic, but sales were almost zero because the audience wasn’t interested in thrillers. This shows that blog size isn’t what matters most for book sales.

Where this fits

I’m not saying you should stop using Amazon ads or BookBub. If those work for you, keep going. But most authors I know have a few hundred dollars a month to spend, and they put it all into paid ads that keep getting more expensive. If you put just $100 to $300 a month into the right two or three blogs in your niche, you’ll usually see better results than with the same spend on paid social ads.

Most authors avoid guest posting because choosing the right blogs seems difficult. But it’s not that hard once you know what to look for. I hope the tips above make it easier.

Thank you Amy and Adbassador. Have you posted some guest blogs on sites to promote your book? Why not share links to your articles in the comments below?

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Name my new radio show!

I have a new project coming up! I’m going to be the host of a new spoken word show on Radio Dacorum, a radio station based in the Hemel Hempsted area (north of London) and we need a name. Please head over to the Radio Dacorum Facebook page to vote for a name and find out more.

Name my show

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Do you want to hear a secret? I’m job hunting and it’s a very different job seeking environment to what it was. AI is checking applications, and I almost never know who is using AI and who isn’t, which makes applying for jobs as difficult as trying to pin a tail on a donkey blindfolded (if anyone reading this would like to explain how AI recruitment works in a blog and how to beat the system I’d love to know!). On top of this, companies are using more and more abbreviations in job adverts, ones that are new to me.

Have you heard of ATL, BTL, and TTL marketing before?

Neither had I. Or so I thought.

Now I’ve googled them, let me explain so that you don’t have to.

ATL content marketing

ATL stands for Above the Line content marketing. This is when companies go big and target audiences through the means of mass media including things like television ads, radio, billboards (you don’t get much bigger than billboards) and even newspapers. It marketing is designed to maximize the marketing reach by targeting as many people as possible, rather than honing in on a target audience, although things such as times of day can help that impact. As a child watching my morning cartoons, I saw a lot of toy adverts and I’d sit there saying “I’m getting that. I’m getting that.” – just as well I didn’t get everything, there’d be no space left in the house.

When would you use ATL content marketing?

ATL content marketing campaigns will be used by companies with a very large marketing budget, because you generally need a lot of money to promote on expensive channels such as television and radio in the first place. Those companies might select a product which they want to highlight from their range to sell, such as Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, from Cadbury’s catalogue of chocolates. By having an advert on television about Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, you aren’t only promoting Dairy Milk, you are also promoting Cadbury and reminding people that they make chocolate. When you are later in the supermarket aisle, you’ll be familiar with Cadbury, associate them with quality and likely choose their chocolate when putting items into your basket.

BTL content marketing

No, I’m not betting my content marketing strategy on some bacon, lettuce and tomato between two pieces of bread, nor am I handing the reigns over to a popular K-Pop band. BTL marketing stands for Below the Line marketing. This is when you target your audience and add a personal touch, aiming to reach specific content marketing audiences with more customised messages.

When would you use BTL content marketing?

BTL content marketing is commonly used when communicating with loyal customers who are already on your books. I’ll give the example here of a clothing brand I like, but don’t buy from often. I stay signed up for marketing emails and paper brochures from Celtic & Co., because I want to keep tabs on when their sales are on, and because they send me discounts from time to time. Because I am signed up, and have been for a while, they do this to keep me sweet.

TTL content marketing

So if ATL means Above the Line, and BTL means Below the Line, any guesses what TTL could mean?

TTL means Through the Line content marketing, and this is the strategy that combines going big with bacon sandwiches. This is the approach that content marketing teams love because it allows all bases to be covered.

When would you use ATL content marketing?

ATL content marketing campaigns are the marketing campaigns that are probably used the most often. If you have a product or service to offer, you want to shout about it and reach as many people as possible. But you also want to target, target, target with the aim of reaching new customers who are actually likely to buy in to your product, and you want to encourage your loyal entourage to part with their cash too. There are lots of ways to reach people, so sit down and which content marketing channels you’re going to combine to have an impact.

Final thoughts

Plz b considerate when uzing abrvs n clarify thr mngs. It mks txt ezier 2 rd. Thx.

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I flew to Bosnia for the Easter break. Before I’d even had the joy of getting to the airport, I’d already been passively-aggressively and metaphorically spat on by Ryanair.

EasyJet, who I was coming back with with, allowed me to check into my return flight one month ahead of departure, so I already had the boarding pass to return before I could even could check in 24-hours ahead of my outbound Ryainair flight. They won’t even let you print the boarding pass any more, which, as a technology-concious traveller, I would prefer to do in case my phone dies or there’s any other worst case scenario. Don’t get me started on the older clientele that they are inconveniencing with this policy. I have an old phone, but I don’t want to buy a new phone yet because it still works fine and does everything I need, except have the capability to download Ryanair’s incompatible app, which has only become a need because the airline are forcing me to have it on pain of not being able to fly at all. I also don’t want extra apps. I now had to take a not-as-old second phone, purely for the purpose of having a Ryanair boarding pass. I didn’t use this additional device otherwise, and it was just an extra item to carry around. This makes no sense at all, and already my holiday and enjoyment were being impacted.

Ryanair’s booking process was no friendlier. Having declined to pay extra money for a seat, which I resent doing and makes no sense for me to do as a solo traveller, I was told that I could avoid having the dreaded middle seat if I paid an extra £3. I knew what was coming, I’d get said dreaded middle seat and – SURPRISE – I did! But there is another twist here – in the end there were only two of us in my row! Ryanair’s automated system tried bullying me into parting with extra cash to avoid a situation that was never going to materialise anyway.

It doesn’t make things any better that Ryanair’s baggage allowance is tiny, and I’m not letting EasyJet off the hook here either because their included baggage allowance is only 5cm more generous than Ryanair’s. I have been navigating the constantly shrinking world of the budget airline baggage allowance for years, and I purposely packed even less than normal to avoid baggage charges. It didn’t matter. I was stopped at Stansted and made to put my squashy bag into Ryanair’s new-look baggage gauge, which is now vertical and has a gap in the bottom. With such a gap, my bag was unable to sit flush because it doesn’t have a solid frame. For being over by an inch, I was charged an additional £60. There is no worse way to sour your travel experience than to be ripped off just to keep your own belongings, and with minutes between catching your flight or not, there is no way to clearly think and decide which items you can part with that would result in the overall loss costing any less. An American girl was also stung, and her bag wasn’t huge either. As I knew that I had no other option, I offered to take some of her additional items, which one staff member said was fine, and another said was not allowed. The poor girl was still ripping up packaging and rummaging through her belongings when I descended towards the tunnel. At the bottom of the one-way escalator, I couldn’t find my walking pole. The lingering after-effects of major surgery mean that walking can sometimes be uncomfortable or challenging for me. I started to panic, if I had lost this, what else had I also lost that I needed? I couldn’t take it any more and I burst into tears. My pole ended up being packed inside my bag, but during the moment of stress at the boarding gate I had no clear head and I was vulnerable to losing essential items during the chaos.

Why would Ryanair introduce hostile policies and practices to make an already stressful event such as getting through an airport even more horrible than it needs to be?

Budget airlines used to be generous. EasyJet, the Daddy of budgets, used to let you squeeze in as much as you can carry – in fact, it was their selling point. We all know that a bag of 55cm x 40cm x 23cm can fit in the overhead locker, and it’s highly unreasonable to expect travellers to fly without the bare minimum for their trip. I purchased a specific bag (a Rick Steves backdoor bag if you are interested – they are great) to fit these dimensions back in 2011, and when the allowance is lower I pack less to match it. I shouldn’t have to compromise. There is no sensible reason to reduce the carry on allowance for travellers, no reason other than to profit from customers, with airlines in America alone generating $7.27 billion dollars from checked-in baggage fees according to the American Buraeu of Transportation Statistics.

Ryanair staff are paid €2.50 for every oversized bag that they stop, and the bonus cap that they used to have has been removed to encourage staff to penalise even more customers. CEO Michael O’Leary was quoted in the Guardian as saying “I make absolutely no apology for it whatsoever.”. Ryanair are not known for being nice, and have played up to their mean image. According to Travis Hoechlon, CEO of RizeUp Media:

“...mocking complaining passengers on social media reinforces the notion that luxury expectations are ridiculous in paying twenty dollars for a flight. The manipulation lowers the expectation so the arrival at a safe destination feels like a victory.”

I am not expecting luxury when I fly, and I wouldn’t bother upgrading for a few hours of my life. I am just expecting to be treated decently.

It’s not just an issue of baggage fees. Even if greed is capitalised, even if O’Leary takes a hard line on his unreasonable rules, there should be no reason to be passive-aggressive towards customers and make the experience negative and do unnecessarily unkind things such as threatening to dump me in the middle seat if I don’t pay. O’Leary, as the very visible head of the company, sets the tone for the airline’s poor attitude, and in turn, Ryanair’s hostile attitude breeds behaviour that nurtures hostile customer attitudes. This creates a cycle – why should ground staff (in my experience the cabin crew bare a lesser brunt from this issue) have sympathy for grumpy or upset customers or cut them any slack?

My experience boarding a Ryanair plane at Stansted didn’t only affect me in the moment, it weighed on my mind throughout my entire trip. I was cautious buying souvenirs, which restricted my enjoyment of the unique shops and markets that my destinations had to offer. During my final 24-hours in Split, I was a ball of anxiety, folding and squashing and squeezing, trying to make my belongings as small as they could be. It affected my sleep and I couldn’t relax, absolutely not wanting to go through this again.

I wasn’t chilled, but Split Airport was. No one working for the airport or Easyjet gave me any bother and I had a smooth flight home. I have never ever been so relived to sit on a plane. Easyjet even allocated me an aisle seat without any hostility or threats.

Dr. Nicole Anders, a licensed clinical psychologist working for a top Las Vegas Hospital, as well as the non profit organisation Trauma Recovery Yoga, says that “there’s a long-term risk [for Ryanair]. Repeated negative emotional experiences can erode trust and brand loyalty. Customers may comply in the moment but disengage over time, becoming less forgiving and more vocal about dissatisfaction. In a competitive market, emotional experience is no longer optional—it’s a key driver of retention.”

It’s at this point I’ll mention that I unfortunately have another flight booked with Ryanair this summer, from Stansted again, and after everything you have read, you are right to wonder why. The destination I am going to doesn’t have many suitable flight connections, and I booked the flight prior to my recent trip – otherwise I would have made a different choice (if a different choice was possible). It’s safe to say that I’ll be upping my packing game this time and refusing to let the bastards win.

Ryanair, feel free to get in touch at contactme@louisaguiseauthor.com and respond to my article.

What are your airline experiences? Comment below.

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@louisaguiseauthorThe BIG Booktok Reveal, insanely delayed because of well, life! A huge thank you to all of the individuals, bookshops, journalists, podcasters, radio hosts, and libraries who have helped me get even this far, it has not been easy! If you are one of my readers please please leave me a review, it makes my work that little bit easier. If you know someone who could take a look at their phone use, buy them a copy of How to Leave a Group Chat today! #booktok #booktoker #book #nonfictionbooks #nonfictionbook #howtoleaveagroupchat #newauthors #firstbook #bluebook #bluecover #welshauthor #greatestgift #reads2025 #booksof2025 #realbooks #popularpsychology #popularpsychologybook #whatiwrote #authorsoftiktok #writersoftiktok #welshwriter #iwritebooks #smartphoneuse #smartphone #smartphoneaddiction #communications #communicationsbooks #communicationsprofessional #whatsapp #socialmedia #socialmediamarketing #technology #bookworm

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Marketing with Social Media is a topic that has been ranking on Google Trends during the last few months, so as you might have a pause over Easter, now’s a good time to check-in with your social media channels.

Set yourself up on every social media channel

A top tip of mine for marketing on social media is to set yourself up on every channel so that you’re not missing out. You don’t want to lose a joint promotion because you don’t have an account on any one channel. For more on each channel, check out my Social Media 101 lowdown blog.

Use a social media scheduling site

Marketing on social media can be time-consuming, but there are websites out there that allow you to schedule lots of social posts across your channels at the same time. Buffer is my tool of choice at the moment, because it allows me to have 10 free posts across three different social platforms.

If you have some budget, upgrade your Buffer package or use another industry-standard platform such as Hootsuite. The great thing about these platforms is that you can easily see your social media marketing schedule laid out in a calendar, and you can duplicate posts to re-schedule them at a later date later as well and repeat the content with little effort.

I’m all set up to market with social media, what do I post now?

Before deciding what to post on social media, consider your target audience. Post articles related to your channel which you think that audience would like. If your account is more of a personal account, you can post things that are more personal to you, because insights into you and your life are also of interest to an audience.

For a real-world case study, read this blog from Rachel Beth Jewellery, who details how she markets with social media to people interested in her gorgeous handmade items.

Should I pay to market with social media, or should I just build an organic social media following?

When people interact with your social media content organically, you have a pretty good idea that they like what you see, and the connections that you get are likely to be authentic. However paying to market your product or business via social media can mean that your product or business could be seen by many more people and really help your reach.

In this blog post from Annie Everill, Digital Marketing Executive of Imaginaire, she beautifully details the two different types of social media and helps you to understand which option is right for you at any given point.

How can I go viral when marketing with social media?

@louisaguiseauthorLive in the moment this summer and put your phone down. How to Leave a Group Chat is available at Waterstones, Amazon and all good bookshops. #booktok #booksoftiktok #howtoleaveagroupchat #popularpsychology #popularpsychologybook #putyourphonedown #booksbooksbooks #book #summervibes #1stjune #summerishere #newauthor #welshauthor #authorsoftiktok #writersoftiktok #welshwriter #iwritebooks #smartphoneuse #authorpost #bookpost #bookpromo #bluebook #blue #dancingrobot #authorlife #smartphoneaddiction #addictedtosmartphone #summerparty #bookparty #booksofinstagram #bookstobuy #travelread #communications #communicationsbooks

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I am an expert marketer, but going viral is very difficult to achieve, and it hasn’t happened for me yet. To increase your chances, try different types of social media content whilst assessing the analytics to hone in on what works for you, and trying to replicate that. Also, post regularly to increase your chances of visibility and try to join in with (sensible) social trends as well.

You might also be lucky. Short, mundane content seems to work well, some of my most popular TikToks are a cat playing with a car ariel (just because it happened, and was cute) and a robot dancing next to my book How to Leave a Group Chat, a video about “How to edit your book”, which contained a narrative, also did well.

How do you or your business do marketing with social media? Do you have any more tips to share or an interesting case study? To feature on All About Digital Marketing, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. And don’t forget to subscribe.

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You may have heard in the news that United Airlines, one of the biggest global air carriers, has banned passengers from listening to devices without headphones, or, as we call it where I am from, loudcasting or bear bating. This is music to my ears, and something that I have been waiting for businesses to take seriously for years.

Just before the announcement came out from United, I read an article that passengers can be prosecuted on flights to India for doing the same thing, yet last year when I flew back from Delhi with Etihad Airways I endured a young child watching loud cartoons on his mum’s phone the entire flight – the same cartoons that he could have watched with headphones using the in-flight entertainment system. I’ve been on EasyJet and British Airways flights where they still ask passengers to use headphones, but this is not enforced. I have been on even older planes where they still have a no phones light (that everyone ignores), and flown Wizzair, Ryanair and Vueling who have shrugged when passengers have loudcasted and refused to do anything at all.

I’m not writing this blog just to rant (ok, maybe a little), but to detail how United Airline’s actions are a sign of positive change and how turning down the volume can benefit business as well as customers. As a potential customer myself (and I have flown United Airlines a couple of times) the guarantee of a quieter journey and some much needed enforcement would definitely be in my mind when booking a flight to North America. I don’t expect total silence, I just expect a comfortable environment where everyone is respected, especially when I am in a tin can thousands of miles above the ground with no where to get away from the noise.

Complaints about noise from other people’s phones are nothing new. Even music players turned up too loudly can be heard by others, as this London Underground poster from 1991 shows, and on trains there is a railway bylaw prohibiting disturbing others with your noise (you can be prosecuted, but train staff seem to have forgotten that this law exists). Complaints about noise and too much talking from other people’s phones have been an issue since mobile phones have existed, and this used to be policed. I worked at the New Theatre in Cardiff whilst at university, and it was part of my job to ask people to put their phones away if I saw them being used during any show.

The contract of carriage

A quick search on United Airlines’ media site interestingly doesn’t have a press release shouting about the new rule like I would have expected. According to reports, United Airlines promoted the new rule by updating their terms of carriage, or in layman’s terms: the terms and conditions that you agree to when you book a ticket. According to CBS news, other American airlines also have rules requiring you to wear headphones, but the big difference between them and United is that they haven’t added it to the terms. United’s rule isn’t just added to the terms and conditions, but added under the section of right to refusal, giving them the right to remove passengers from the flight, and ban them if they continue to violate the rules. The other big difference is that United Airlines staff are actively enforcing this new headphones policy (trigger warning: the video is very shouty), and they seem to be the only ones doing so.

Lots and lots of press coverage

United Airline’s new rule about headphones has resulted in wall-to-wall coverage across major global news outlets. This is likely because we’ve given in to people behaving how they want to, despite the fact that most of us hate loudcasting, and we’re not used to seeing anything enforced any more. In a 2025 study by not-for-profit More in Common, 93% of people don’t like loudcasting. This is almost exactly the same percentage of people who voted “Talking loudly on a mobile phone” and “Listening to music loud enough so that others can hear it” as their top most witnessed inconsiderate behaviours in a TfL Considerate Travel Study from 2008. TfL and other UK rail operators also have just cause to fine and kick people off trains, as Railway Byelaw 7 explicitly bans unauthorized noise that annoys others.

93% is a huge number

The data around noise annoyance has been consistent for decades, and it continues to be consistent and relevant, so businesses, this is your time to shine. As a customer, I have left restaurants earlier and skipped desert because someone has ruined the environment scrolling TikTok (sometimes the staff), or not entered a restaurant at all because there’s a toddler watching cartoons. I parted ways with a gym due to video calls being taken in the changing rooms, and left a bad review for a Novotel that wouldn’t act when a couple watched football on a tablet at the poolside (from inside the pool). Customers like me are largely invisible, but when the data is this strong there is a very strong probability that there are many of us, and you are losing out if you are not enforcing noise policies and ensuring that your environment is fair and comfortable.

Just look at the coverage that United Airlines has received from not only making a policy, but also visibly enforcing it.

United Airlines still promotes their mobile app

A press release might be missing from United’s Press site, but interestingly there is a press release dated 14^th January which promotes their mobile app and the fact that customers can use it to order food ahead of flights. Having phones to hand all of the time are part of the reason that we cannot bear to put them away, and we have become too used to using them all the time for everything. So it’ll be interesting to see how the new rule works alongside the fact that United are encouraging customers to use their app, on their phones.

I did reach out to United Airlines with some questions for this article, so let’s see if they get back to me. I’d love to do a follow up article with them.

And finally, thank you United for taking the lead and turning off the noise.

Do you also have a marketing or business case to share? To feature on All About Digital Marketing, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. And don’t forget to subscribe.

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