Our panellists, from left, Kim Winter (Makerhood), Tim Dickens (Brixton Blog), Fiona Douglas (Oh Sew Brixton) and Helen Ward (West Norwood Feast)

As Kim mentioned here, last Thursday Makerhood held a joint event with West Norwood Business Club at Portico Gallery on Knights Hill, where our knowledgable and friendly experts answered questions from makers and business people.

The audience came from Brixton, West Norwood and even as far away as Streatham (I’m kidding, Streatham – it was great to meet you). They asked intelligent questions such as “What’s the best way to keep in touch with your regular customers?”, “As a local business what’s the best way to approach local press?” and “Do you think goody bags are a good way to promote your business?”

As you can imagine, given the successful businesses and organisations that our panellists represent, their advice and tips were practical, insightful and – most importantly – easy to follow for any maker or small business. Advice such as offering something extra in your newsletter to keep people reading, making sure you have new information when you contact your customers, and using social media, local forums and meet ups to promote events are simple – yet our panellists prove how effective they can be.

One of the pieces of advice I found most interesting was how to approach journalists (not surprisingly, the title of this post comes from this part of the event!). Tim Dickens described how to begin to build a relationship with journalists and how to present your information in a way that makes it easy for journalists to see its value. That’s useful knowledge for anyone trying to get their work noticed!

We’d like to say a big thank you to John Price and Portico Gallery for hosting this event and providing drinks, to West Norwood Business Club for collaborating with us and to our panellists for sharing their experience. And of course, thanks to everyone who came along and took part.