Emma Norris - Ask Me Anything Spotlight

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Tell us about the biggest areas you help your clients. How do you do it?

The majority of my time with clients is spent building the like, trust and know factor with their audience using content. Whether it’s an educational blog series, a YouTube video or a live event series, I create customer-centric content that illustrates how the brand genuinely understands and cares about their customers.

My goal is to enable my clients to provide genuine value through content — whether that’s to educate, entertain, inform, or inspire the customer to take action — and solves a problem for the customer.

What made you decide to become an independent consultant?

I ventured into freelance around 5 years ago, mainly as a way to diversify my income while still working for an online wellness blog.

I ended up loving the variety that freelancing afforded me, and the fact I could work where I wanted, on my own terms. While I started off doing a mix of short-term freelance gigs and long-term contract work, I have transitioned into consulting where I continue to create content but am also diving deeper into big picture strategy.

Do you have any advice for consultants here who are trying to create and share content that connects with their audience? Is there a trick to making our content more empathetic?

It might sound obvious, but I think it’s just about remembering there’s a living, breathing human being on the other side of the screen. People don’t buy things just because they’re nice to have; they buy when they have an urgent problem that needs to be resolved.

The empathy stems from understanding what keeps your ideal client up at night. What do they complain to their friends about on the phone? What do they rant about to their partner? Keeping these pain points top of mind can help you create content that shows you genuinely understand your customer, and have a solution.

How do you find a balance between creative vision, data driven results, and technical execution, especially when it comes to marketing campaigns where they are all so important?

Great question! I think as a creative person, my natural inclination is to lead with the vision or idea. However, there’s no point coming up with a witty, clever, creative campaign if the right people aren’t going to see it, or if it’s not addressing a need that actually exists.

So before you get to the technical execution stage, you need to step back and consider marrying the qualitative/quantitative data about what customers are responding to, with a vision that’s actually going to cut through the noise and get you noticed.

How do you bridge gaps with your clients when it comes to "eye for design" which can be incredibly subjective and clashing?

My partner is an art director and comes across this situation all the time — the client/customer always thinks they know best, even if they don't come from a marketing/design/content background.

At the end of the day, it’s just about (gently and diplomatically) reminding the client that this isn’t about them. It’s not about what they like or what they think looks/sounds good. As you say, it is completely subjective. But, it’s about what the customer wants, what the customer needs, and what’s going to make them take action.

How do you differentiate yourself organically and grow a following on social these days?

When we try too hard to be ‘different’ or ‘vulnerable’ online because we think that’s what’s going to differentiate us, it actually ends us making us less authentic.

Gary Vee’s philosophy of ‘document, don’t create’ is really helpful here. If you’re simply documenting your world — recent experiences you’ve had with clients, projects you’re working on, things you’re curious about (in and outside of work) etc. — it’s much easier to become a prolific and genuine content creator. You become inimitable, because nobody else can duplicate you and your life.

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Team at Mylance
Marketing + Content Team

Every Mylance team member has done consulting. We're experts, and we've seen what consulting enables: more time with our families, traveling the world, more time on passion projects, or to start that business we've been dreaming about.