Our May 2019 Event. Rachel Forcella: Uncovering the message to reveal the voice. How I work with entrepreneurs to help them better connect and engage with their audience and clients

This time, the theme of the event and the topic we discussed was ‘copywriting’ and marketing ourselves as language professionals. Our speaker was Rachel Forcella, content strategist and copywriter. Her talk was entitled “Uncovering the message to reveal the voice. How I work with entrepreneurs to help them better connect and engage with their audience and clients.”

After Gabriella Ferenczi welcomed the attendees, we listened to Rachel’s insightful talk that was a great conversation starter.

As Rachel explained:

We live in a world of information. However, broadcasting pure information, facts and figures will not help today’s entrepreneurs including language professionals to influence the marketplace and stand out from the crowd. Humans crave connection.

Rachel shared how she helps entrepreneurs to uncover that special something that connects their service or product with their prospective customers and how she ensures that that message is communicated through blogs, videos, social media and podcasts.

She walked us through why it’s crucial to understand who our ideal client is, to know about their challenges and aspirations, and what words and language they use when talking about their problems.

“Speak your ideal customer’s language.”

It’s important to educate our clients through our marketing copy, but it’s essential to show them that we understand them first. We want them to go on our website and say: That’s it, they really get me here!

Rachel also highlighted:

“What clients are actually buying is a better future version of themselves.”

So it’s not about us and our services, it’s about them: what they get out of working with us.

We talked about what’s ok and what’s not acceptable when it comes to writing our marketing copy, eg. when breaking the rules of proper grammar and syntax may be ok, but why spelling mistakes are a no-no.

And we also mentioned that clear and concise is always above clever when it comes to the language of how we market ourselves.

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After Rachel’s talk, we continued the conversation, talking about our challenges when it comes to marketing ourselves as language professionals, finding new clients, having to educate prospective clients and warming them up to buy our services, and also that there’s so much free stuff available online that it becomes increasingly difficult to justify the cost of our services.

We also talked about what it’s like working through agencies – no need to market ourselves as such, but being reliant on them completely comes with both advantages and disadvantages.

It was a lovely evening full of lively discussions, spent in the company of language teachers, trainers and coaches, a fashion blogger, social media manager and copywriter, a multilingual interpreter, a language training company director, and another curious business person from an entirely different industry who enjoys talking about languages, cultures and business.

Thank you to everyone who joined us, see you next month!

#wearelanguageprofessionals

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About the speaker:

Rachel Forcella is a content strategist and copywriter. She works with female entrepreneurs to uncover their voice and message and use it in their content to help them build profitable businesses.

She has a degree in English Language and Linguistic Science from the University of York. She launched her career in copy and content writing in 2013 after leaving her job in corporate finance.

To learn more about Rachel and her work, check out her Facebook page and Instagram (it’s beautiful!), connect with her via LinkedIn, and feel free to reach out to her via rachel@rachelforcella.com