We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chloe Barnes. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chloe below.

Alright, Chloe thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about one of the craziest things you’ve experienced in your journey so far.

One silly little video changed my life.

I started creating content to market my business early on — it felt like the most natural way for me to get clients, and after having some success making videos on TikTok for my personal account, I thought I’d have a go at it and see where it took me.

Not only did I get my first client from TikTok when I had 24 followers (proof you don’t need big numbers to get clients), but when Instagram introduced Reels, things really took off. I started repurposing all my videos onto Instagram as well, and they started to do well. It was quiet at first, but then I had a video take off and get over 300k views. It was thrilling — but it fizzled out after a while and as the video was slightly off niche, it didn’t really translate to any business or follows.

A short time later, I heard a funny small business meme song that was making the rounds on TikTok, and decided to apply the trend to my own niche. I posted it on Instagram as well, and it took off, big time. Millions of views. I couldn’t open the app without being bombarded by notifications! Comments, follows, inquiries from potential clients, an instantly full calendar of bookings — and a fair few trolls, to boot.

I couldn’t believe it. I was over the moon and terrified all at once. I read every single comment (even though I know you’re not supposed to) and became overwhelmed at how many people not only seemed to identify with the struggles of a small business owner, but also how much people wanted to reach out and say thank you for making them feel seen. My business completely took off at that point and although I always believed in the power of social media for marketing, I’d never really seen the positives for myself on such a vast scale before.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

While I’m not new to the world of marketing and copywriting (coming up to 15 years now), it took me far longer than I’d like to admit to go all-in on my business and actually take a chance on myself. There was always a reason why it wasn’t a good time, and looking back I should have started SO many years ago. But you live and learn, haha.

I started out in marketing by accident — I got a job in my old university as the administrator of the student exchange program. What I didn’t realise at the time was how much marketing was involved in that — we had quite a low uptake rate and really needed students to see the value of the program, and having completed an amazing student exchange in Sweden during my degree, I was the perfect person to help market it. From there I ended up working in an agency where I started out in SEO and learnt how to drive traffic to blogs, and started copywriting on the side. I wrote blog posts for a digital agency for £4 a pop and thought it was the best thing ever — I was making money for writing! I laugh now, but it made me see what was possible.

I stayed in marketing, hopping from role to role, and kept coming back to writing. After working at a startup and really finding my feet with copywriting, I decided it was time and made the leap to start my own business. I wrote websites, emails, brand voice guidelines, and ads for small business owners and startups — and I LOVED it. It was quiet until I went viral, and it’s been busy ever since. I work mostly with female solopreneurs and SaaS CMOs, but really, it’s more about the brand — they’ve gotta be warm, playful, and a little bit audacious.

These days I’m doing less copywriting and more content marketing and overall strategy, because I want to help business owners and startups realise the incredible power of content marketing when it comes to getting in front of their ideal clients and customers, and help them learn how to use social media to nurture that relationship and build an engaged community of fans, not just followers. I’m different because I don’t think you need a fancy setup or hardcore editing skills to do content marketing well — you can be scrappy, you can be a little rough around the edges, and still make a damn good living from it. It’s not as complicated as people make it out to be.

I’m most proud of my ability to 1) bring the fun to marketing — if you’re not having fun, what’s the point? When you do have fun, it catches. People want to be around you, they want to watch what you do — it’s the ultimate shortcut for finding your people. And 2) I can spot things other people don’t — I’ve got a million ideas and can see connections and links between people and their niches that have the potential to do incredibly well on social. So I want to help them do just that.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

This is my favourite question, because everybody sees “overnight success” and nobody ever sees the 6 months of crickets that precede it. I posted almost every day on one platform or another for 6-12 months before I saw any real traction. I got few comments, low visibility, very few followers. It was SLOW. And that’s fine! Slow growth lets you build an engaged community. When you know everyone in your follower list, it’s so much easier to build relationships and engage meaningfully with all the content you love and care about. You can’t really do that without making sacrifices once your account gets bigger.

My advice for people starting out: try all the formats to see what you’re good at and what’s easiest for you. It’s likely you’ll prefer one format over another, so really lean into that as your go-to content. Consistency is one of the hardest things to manage, so you ideally want a format you find easy, otherwise it’s going to be a slog every time. Mine is short form video — I find it so much easier to just chat to the camera instead of creating a little graphic, so that’s what I do and it’s worked really well for me.

And get started with what you have, equipment-wise, then pay to upgrade it after a while. Don’t decide you’re going to start a TikTok channel and go buy all the equipment and software, just start making some videos with your phone and film by a window to get good lighting. Reward your consistency and growth with upgraded equipment once you know you’re going to stick to it.

Lastly, slow growth is good growth. Aim for substance and quality in your content rather than hacky virality — I always encourage new business owners to post a lot, then refine it as you learn what works for you. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to go viral, but as anyone will tell you it’s not a long-term strategy — you can try ideas you think might go viral, that’s fine, but there’s gotta be substance underneath it. Get your business set up so that if virality happens, you can handle it.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I want to help really cool people with great businesses do better at marketing themselves.

It absolutely kills me how there are so many talented geniuses out there doing poorly in business because they’re missing the “put yourself out there” gene, and I want to help change that. You don’t have to brag, dance on video, reveal your deepest darkest secrets to the internet or do pretty much anything you don’t want to do — but there is a place for you and your talent to be successful online!

Basically, I want to put more money and power into the hands of people who are highly competent and all-round incredible human beings. And fortunately, I meet a lot of them in my business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thewritechloe.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewritechloe/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@thewritechloe

Image Credits
Katie Needle Photography, Eva Couto Design