Wow. What a year 2020 turned out to be.

It was certainly nothing like we were expecting at NSC HQ, with redundancies, adapting to working from home, missing seeing our families, coming down with Covid-19 in October, and the strangest Christmas of our lives.

But on the positive side, we published our first book, ‘A-Z of Marketing for Small Businesses’ (currently 50% off), both started amazing new jobs, and saw a 78% increase in visitors to the NSC site from last year!

While we’re not out of the woods yet from the pandemic, 2021 is still an opportunity to grow in other ways where we can.

We’ll continue to educate and inform, not only you, our readers, but ourselves – we’ll always be learning.

The end of the year is a perfect time for creatives around the galaxy to take stock and build their knowledge, to step into the new decade with confidence and novel ideas.

With that in mind, we’ve put together our top articles of 2020 so you can read through the best of the best and kick-start 2021 armed with the knowledge you need to succeed and grow.

WAKING UP MOTIVATED DURING A LOCKDOWN

It’s no surprise that this article by Dean turned out to be so popular.

There’s no denying it can be hard to keep up your motivation levels when the world’s in turmoil (when is it not?) and wherever you’re living is in lockdown.

When Dean found that his motivation was waning during the first Covid-19 lockdown in the UK, he tackled the problem in classic Dean fashion: by researching methods of motivation, and creating nudenotes about it.

Read more about his motivation methods here.

DESIGNER’S REDUNDANCY ACTION PLAN

Early this summer, Dean also found that, amidst the pandemic and due to changing brand characteristics, he (and all of his colleagues) were made redundant.

The news came as a shock to both of us, and we were in a scary position we hadn’t been in for a couple of years: hunting for a job.

And with the hit the job market was taking from the coronavirus pandemic, it wasn’t exactly the best time to be looking for a job – as I’m sure a few of you can attest to.

Now, Dean’s not one to wallow in bad news like this, so he leapt into action with his Designer Redundancy Plan.

Sure enough, after a couple of months of job-hunting (and panicking!), he found a great role where he can flourish as a designer and creative problem-solver.

If you’ve found yourself in a similar position due to the pandemic or restructuring, have a look at Dean’s Redundancy Action Plan to help increase your chances of jumping into another great role.

HOW TO TURN INFOGRAPHICS INTO NUDENOTES

Infographics are a fantastic source of inspiration, for creatives and business-minded people alike, and a brilliant way to communicate information in a visual way.

But how do we fully absorb this information?

With nudenotes!

Dean’s created a four-step plan to help you create your own nudenotes based on infographics, no matter what the topic, so you can more effectively retain that information for future reference.

Check out his four-step plan here.

DEEP DIVE: SWOT ANALYSIS

If you’ve worked in marketing, design, or another creative role, chances are, you’ve heard of the SWOT analysis.

The SWOT analysis is a great way to help highlight your business’, product’s, or marketing’s best bits, as well as places for improvement.

Essentially, they can help you to grow, and to define what success means for you and your business.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, and is usually laid out in a grid format to help you visually understand each of these key elements.

If you’re new to SWOT analyses, or you want to refresh your knowledge, have a read through of Dean’s article here.

CREATIVE CRINGE: PACKAGING DESIGN EDITION

As part of our ongoing Creative Cringe series, where we unpack all of the things that make us roll our eyes in our creative working lives, Dean took on the cringes he’s encountered as a packaging designer.

Whether you’re a packaging designer yourself, or you work with packaging designers, this article is well worth a read so you can either chuckle ruefully, nod along with his experiences, or realise the errors of your ways…

If you have any suggestions for other roles or creative elements of business for us to examine for our Creative Cringe series, drop us a comment below.

Check out our Creative Cringes for packaging design here.

COPYWRITING BASICS

Every business needs decent copywriting to be successful.

Whether it’s copywriting for emails, social media, content, website copy, scripts, or even on your physical product, copywriting is fundamental.

But if you’re not a natural writer, it can be hard to know what (and how) to write well, to represent your brand and for SEO.

Never fear, because our Marketing Lead and Content Marketer, Tassia, has created a useful guide with grammatical, technical and creative tips on how you can improve your copywriting.

Browse the copywriting guide here.

PSYCHOLOGY OF MARKETING

Marketing and psychology go hand-in-hand – think about it, how can you communicate effectively with your target audience and customers if you don’t know how they think and what makes them tick?

In Tassia’s guide to psychology in marketing, you’ll find tips and suggestions for how to better understand your target audience, and grow your business.

It’s not about ‘tricking’ your audience, but more about learning about them – after all, knowledge is power, especially when it comes to marketing.

Find out what makes your target audience tick in the guide here.

25 TIPS FOR MARKETING OVER THE HOLIDAYS

As the December festivities crept ever closer, Tassia created a guide on how to market over the holidays, to help businesses big and small get the most out of the yuletide season.

These tips can be useful throughout the year, or for specific national holidays, and it’s not too late to start thinking about December 2021!

Browse through our festive marketing tips here.

CREATIVE CRINGE: MARKETING EDITION

Earlier in the year, Tassia decided to tackle the marketing edition of our Creative Cringe series.

Needless to say, there was a lot to unpack, so if you’re a marketer with your head in your hands, read through this listicle – you may find the solution to your problem.

If you have any other suggestions of editions for our Creative Cringe series, we’d love to hear from you, so feel free to drop us a comment below.

Read the full article on marketing Creative Cringes here.

MAKING YOUR MARKETING INCLUSIVE

2020 was a big year for inclusivity – both the wins and the hard hits to humanity and equity.

Inclusivity should be something that all marketers are actively working towards, because the change to society can be made in business.

Of course, some issues, such as racism, are systemic, but that doesn’t mean that we should stop working towards equality and equity.

If you read just one article this year, we implore you to read this one, so you can start implementing more inclusive ways to market your small business.

This is an issue that’s very close to our hearts, so stay tuned for more on inclusivity and dismantling the systemic inequalities in our society today, and how you, as a business, can help push this societal shift.

If you have any suggestions on articles or approaches to inclusivity for us to explore, please feel free to pop a comment below – we’d love to hear from you.

Find out how to make your marketing more inclusive here.

Those are our most popular articles of 2020!

We’ve got much more in store for 2021 and beyond, so register for our newsletter to get our latest news and top articles straight to your inbox – we promise, no spamming!

If you have anything else you’d like us to explore, or any suggestions for nudenotes, feel free to drop us a comment below – it would genuinely mean a lot to us to hear from you.

That’s it from us for 2020, so bring on 2021!