The People on the Byline

Out & About Marketing is written by four people who know small businesses from the inside: from the counter, the van, the spare-room office and the kitchen table where the accounts get done. We write under pen names, partly to keep our day jobs separate and partly because the articles should stand on what they say rather than on who says it.

None of us holds a title worth putting after a name, and we do not pretend otherwise. What we share is a habit of noticing what works for small firms and writing it down plainly.

Who writes what

Barnabas

Barnabas keeps the notebook in order and looks after planning and branding. He is the one who insists every guide answers its title question early and that each example sounds like a real business rather than a textbook case. His starting point for most readers is the one-page marketing plan.

Ansel

Ansel follows press and media. He has spent a fair amount of time on both sides of a pitch email and has firm views about subject lines. If you are preparing to approach a newsroom, begin with his guide to pitching a local journalist.

Cosima

Cosima covers local marketing: being found on maps, collecting reviews and answering the difficult ones. Her rule is simple. If a tactic would embarrass you when a customer found out about it, it does not belong on this site.

Eudora

Eudora watches the money pages. She reads the small print so the rest of us do not have to, and she makes sure every finance article says clearly that it offers general information rather than personal advice.

How we share the work

Each piece has one writer and at least one reader from the rest of the team. The reader's job is to approach the draft as a newcomer would, marking every term that needs explaining and every step that skips ahead. Nothing goes up until both are content with it.

We meet, mostly online, to choose what to write next. Suggestions come from questions readers send, from things we keep running into in our own work and from gaps we notice in the sections of the site.

Things we keep in mind

• Small budgets are the norm, so we favour methods that cost time before they cost money.
• A tactic that only works by bending a platform's rules is not a tactic we recommend.
• Readers are busy, so short paragraphs, clear headings and tables beat long introductions.
• Mistakes happen, and we would rather fix one than defend it.

You can read more about our standards on writing with care, or write to the whole team through the contact page.