mYfAVE'StOYOU: "Real Company Shit" with Nothing More than Leftover Timber

Posted by Jon-C

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

Hi, I'm Jon from WoodworkersUK - as you'll probably guess from the company name, I'm not an SEO by profession; a very small part of my job entails battling to keep the website in the SERPs! I'm actually a Joiner (Carpenter if you're reading this is the US) working in a small family-run business in North Wales; there are only four of us (and a dog named Ted)! So you're probably thinking, a Carpenter writing on YouMoz, WTF?!

The motley crew (the Westie is the brains of the operation)!

We're a good looking bunch, are we not?! :-)

Image credit : Wil Reynolds Mozcon 2013 Slideshare (Slide 154)

I tend to try and follow as many of the top SEO or marketing blogs and sites as possible to aid myself in keeping our website going and I put into practice anything that I can, with mixed results. I love doing website content but find that it doesn't pick up a lot of links naturally ('Build content and they will come?!' Really Mr Cutts?!). Being small, we've a very tight, limited budget for things like this as well, so some of the things I read online are not realistic for us; everything we do is handmade rather than mass produced, so we're not churning hundreds of items out a week, which in turn, does not give us £1000s to play with each week.

To cut to the chase, I stumbled across a Wil Reynolds Mozcon 2012 video on this very site, it was called Real Company Shit (you'll have to scroll down a bit) and got me thinking a bit. In the video, Wil talks about getting construction links from Mommy bloggers and it was the particular bit about 'inspiring the next generation of engineers' (about 7 minutes 20 into the video) that got me thinking 'What could I do that is 'Real Company Shit'? Hmmmmm?'

Lightbulb moment!

Fast forward a couple of days and I'm clearing out our workshops; we tend to accrue a lot of offcuts and timber, which costs us money, so obviously, we don't like to throw it away as we may be able to use it in the future. However, we can only store so much against the walls until the workshops become narrower and narrower...

Whilst sorting through the offcuts, I thought 'Real Company Shit'! As soon as I got home that night, I wrote a blog post offering the timber for free to local schools for their woodworking departments and thought no more of it and clicked publish and shared on Social Media.

Let's get the next generation of woodworkers into working with wood! Schools use timber and suffer from budget problems and the kids are the next generation of Carpenters/Joiners etc.

Now let me get this straight, I never did this with the idea of getting links etc, I honestly wasn't sure what would happen; I wanted to get rid of some timber and help local schools out first and foremost. I thought that at best we'd probably get a few mentions and likes on Facebook and shares on Twitter, if anything else happened then it was a bonus. By the end of the following day, I had a quick check and we'd had about 30-odd likes on Facebook; I know I know this does not sound a great deal to you SEO types, but for us and our niche, I was quite surprised.

The following day I was fielding phone calls from a couple of schools and decided to follow the original blog post with a second, and yep you've guessed it, a load more Facebook likes again. It was at this stage that I decided to add a sign up page to our website for both schools looking for timber and woodworkers with timber to offer to sign up, this way I hoped to reduce the phone calls to us and give people something to link to.

Outreach

By this stage, we'd got a list of schools in five counties all looking for timber and there is no way we can hope to supply all the local schools that have been in touch with us in a short time frame. We decided to try a spot of outreach. We've got a sign up form for other woodworkers so maybe I can get a few mentions online from Trade associations and rather than send emails, we decided to phone people up as it's more personal...

Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes

First off, we got in touch with ITV Wales News (a local TV station covering the whole of Wales). I thought that this would be a complete waste of time but after a quick phone call, they told us it was a lovely quirky story and they would be in touch (blimey!). Lo and behold, they came down within a fortnight to film in our workshops and in Denbigh High School, which was the first school we supplied with timber. You can see what ITV Wales did here. Despite our best attempts, they wouldn't link to us on their website, but a spot of national coverage was amazing!

We also tried writing a few press releases for the local papers, but unfortunately, they were not interested (I shall return to these later)! Also on our radar, was the trade timber websites and magazines; The British Woodworking Federation (BWF) was an easy one to sort out as we are already members, so wanting to help us out, they wrote a news item appealing for others to get involved and they also gave us a mention in their Email newsletter. The BWF actually have a campaign running (entitled 'I made that') to encourage more people to take up Joinery/Woodworking apprenticeships. This helped me as I took up the angle with all the trade organisations that we need to be getting the kids interested in woodwork in school; this would then make them more likely to turn to woodwork later on, if only schools had a steady supply of timber!

We also contacted both TRADA (Timber Research and Development Association) and TTJ (Timber Trades Journal), both thought it was great and both wrote news items for their websites!

All links have so far brought me a steady stream of visitors too.

Reclaim those brand mentions

As I say, the TTJ wrote a news article but unfortunately the article in question was subscriber only, which I thought defeated the point a bit - a quick phone call unlocked this article for all to see. Unfortunately when I did get to read the article they had mentioned the sign up page url but not as a link. Another quick phone call (they were probably getting sick of me by now!) and they made it into a link for us, job done!

Back to the local press

We had no joy with the local press; however, I was put in touch with a local university looking for timber for their art students. After a chat with the person responsible for PR, we were told he could get write an article on their website in the press section, which would then get sent to the local papers. Sure enough, he was as good as his word and not only did we get a mention (and link) from the University website, but we also got mentions in three local papers!

Local mentions

We've also managed to get a spot of publicity by working with Business to Communities, an organisation that encourages responsible business practice by helping out in the community; this can be donations of materials, time etc., anything that may make a difference. Denbigh High School (who featured in the ITV Wales video) also linked to us!

Social media

We've got one sign up page on our website devoted to this and in regards to shares etc, it is by far the most popular; at last count, it's got 66 Facebook likes, 25 Tweets and 2 Google+ (on a side note, does anybody apart from Internet marketers use G+?!). In total, adding together the four posts on our blog as well, we've 268 shares across various networks, Facebook being by far the largest at 205 likes!

People seem to share the sign-up page more as this has the majority of social media action (66 likes on Facebook, 25 Tweets and 2 Google+).

For us this is going viral!

You can find out more on what people have been saying here.

We'll put on the show ourselves

It hasn't all been plain sailing, however. We have tried repeatedly to get the local authorities that are responsible for school budgets involved to lend a hand in publicising what we are trying to do, but we have been met with suspicion and a completely unhelpful attitude (Welsh Assembly Government/Denbighshire County Council/Flintshire County Council). We've a few more ideas of where we can go with this in the future, with a view to getting other woodworkers involved. Most notably, something we're thinking of suggesting is working in partnership with Denbigh High School, as they have been a joy to supply and work with; they are definitely a school that we will continue to supply timber to come hell or high water.

Have you got the wood?

In the unlikely event of you reading this and you are a North Wales (or nearby) woodworker (or know of one who may be interested) with scrap timber to spare, then please get in touch as we're still looking for others to get involved.

As I say, I'm no SEO/Internet Marketer and it was a bit daunting writing this! Thanks for reading and I hope you've enjoyed my YouMoz post!

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