Are you falling prey to ‘Cobbler’s Shoes’ syndrome?

Well, are you? I noted just this morning, that I am.

Cobblers Shoes

Let me explain what I mean.

You may have heard the saying, ‘the cobbler’s shoes are always the worst heeled’ – meaning that whilst we’re good at giving great advice to others, and helping others to succeed, we don’t necessarily take or action our own advice.

I haven’t blogged for a while on the Carvill site as I’ve been head down writing my third book. Believe me, there are literally hundreds of stories and insights I’m going to be sharing once it’s over the line, (and it nearly is), but for the past 6 months any writing focus has been purely on building great content for my chapters.

That said, as is always the case, there’s a fair bit of plate spinning happening. And we’re in the process of revamping the Carvill website.

I took a short break from my writing just this morning as I had a query from my head of design, which led me back to our site to check on something, so I could respond.

And that’s when I had my cobbler’s shoes moment. That moment, where you look at something that’s yours and you think, if this was a client’s site – I’d have advised they do that totally differently.

Don’t get me wrong, our current site isn’t dreadful – but there are gems within it, which are totally hidden from view.

For example: this testimonial from Ollie Sharpe, UK Sales Manager – Staffing and Search at LinkedIn.

“The Business of Being Social has become a useful resource within the LinkedIn sales team.

The book really helped us to understand the bigger picture of social media and it was instrumental when we changed the way that we work with clients. It helped us to develop how we consult with our clients and advise them on how to build a social media strategy.

We were missing the critical aspects that social media channels enable, such as continuous conversations, brand proposition and getting employees on board to strengthen both brand and message.

From what we have learned from the book, we now advise companies to build their followers, engage them with content, and this will enable them to do what they do best – recruit!

The Business of Being Social is now a must read for all new recruits into my LinkedIn sales team – and has become an integral part of our training.

Highly practical – yet at the same time, highly insightful. A really useful tool for all businesses, either starting out or looking at how to optimise their social media activity.”

Wonderful right? Powerful even. However, pretty much invisible on our site.

In fact, the points Ollie raises about the book helping him and his team to see the bigger picture, build social media strategy, focus on continuous conversations, understand how social impacts brand positioning and the importance of galvanising employees to strengthen the message – these aren’t just aspects that are in that book, but they are key aspects of the services that we as a team within Carvill deliver to our clients.  The book is the outcome of experience, not theory.

When revamping our site, I want such key messages to be up front and centre, a key component showcasing who we are, why we do what we do and the social proof that we do it.

Our value proposition currently focuses on the features we offer – but look at any other social media and digital agency and they’ll all pretty much have similar features.

The key focus should be on the difference you make to the audiences you serve.

I know this, it’s what I preach – so why haven’t we heeded our own advice? Too busy serving others.  And whilst the metaphor of, you can’t serve others from an empty teapot tends to focus on well-being, so too is it relevant when sharing expertise. You need to be walking the walk.

My cobbler’s shoes moment hit home hard this morning. And I wanted to share it, because, I have a suspicion that there may be some of you that focus so much on delivering to others, and like the cobbler with worn out heels, you too could do with a bit of taking stock and heeding your own skill and advice too.

As always – any questions tweet me @michellecarvill or email michelle@carvillcreative.co.uk. 

Michelle Carvill, best selling business author, speaker, founder and Director at Carvill - the social media agency focused on creating authentic engagement. Currently penning her third book: Get Social – Practical Strategies and Tactics for Leaders – to be published by Kogan Page in  Spring 2018. For information about how team Carvill can help you or your team with  social media marketing – either strategy, training, coaching or day to day management - simply get in touch.