Bliss

28/07/2025

is coming to an end – but your plastic-free habits don’t have to.

This month has been a great reminder that conscious choices, shared knowledge, and practical tools all play a part in tackling plastic pollution.

As a purpose-led agency, we’ll be continuing to reduce our plastic footprint beyond July – including the adoption of some new plastic-reducing tips we’ve discovered this month. Let’s keep this going!

21/07/2025

91% of all plastic ever produced hasn’t been recycled.

This was such a shocking statistic, that Great Britain's Royal Statistical Society named it their statistic of the year in 2018. Back then, it was estimated that 8.3 billion metric tons of mostly disposable products had been produced in the preceding 60 years, when mass production of plastics began. It’s a barely comprehensible figure, and one that’s only grown in the years that have followed.

It’s a stark reminder of why Plastic Free July matters – and why reducing single-use plastic at the source is key.

18/07/2025

A new website for Imperial War Museums.

The charity IWM needed a fully redesigned, future-proofed website for the American Air Museum, at IWM Duxford.

With a huge archive containing 100,000s of stories, it was critical that we could migrate this without loss, alongside improving the usability of the site to support a broad audience.

From discovery to delivery, we partnered closely with their team to create a fast, flexible platform to reflect their mission and ambition.

Read the full case study: https://www.thisisbliss.com/case-studies/new-website-imperial-war-museums

16/07/2025

It’s reported around 201 million (a whopping 67%) of organisations worldwide now use generative AI in some capacity. ChatGPT and other LLMs (large language models) such as Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity and Claude have filtered into everyday life and, it seems, have permanently changed the way we work and learn.

A recent study by MIT’s Media Lab – albeit with a small sample size, not peer reviewed – has concluded people using ChatGPT demonstrated lower brain engagement than those who refrained from using it.

This makes for very interesting – and concerning – reading, with many perspectives shared across LinkedIn. A primary concern noted was the developmental damage it could cause when usage is introduced too early, leading to over-reliance, and the delegation of thought and creation to a program.

If this is what’s happening now, in the relative infancy of generative AI, how do you think this will affect future generations in the long term?

Find the study, and opinions, here: https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/chatgpt-harms-brain-activity-study-6936409/

People who use ChatGPT have lower brain engagement than those who refrain from using the generative AI tool, according to a study from MIT's Media Lab. Read more.

14/07/2025

Going plastic-free doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

Easy everyday swaps are a good start: think refillable toiletries, reusable bags and bottles, or avoiding plastic-wrapped produce.

The Bliss team have shared a few of their tried-and-tested ways that have helped cut down their plastic waste, including:

👜 Using a KeepCup and a tote bag when out and about https://uk.keepcup.com/
🍋 Switching to SMOL cleaning products https://smol.com/uk
🩴 Investing in natural rubber flip flops, such as Waves https://www.wavesflipflops.co.uk/
🍯 Using glass jars and bottles to store foods, instead of plastic containers
🧴 Buying large containers of household liquids and dispensing into smaller ones, such as old soap dispensers
📦 Ditching cling film and using boxes instead
🐾 Switching pet food from plastic pouches to tinned, such as B Corp Lily's Kitchen https://www.lilyskitchen.co.uk
🧼 Using grüum shampoo bars instead of bottles https://www.gruum.com/
♻️ Extending the life of any difficult-to-avoid plastic packaging by using it more than once, such as for cat litter disposal

What easy switch-out could you make?

10/07/2025

You might have seen an in-app notification, or email land in your inbox over the last couple of weeks, along these lines:

“We're writing to let you know that starting on 10 July 2025 search engines, such as Google and Microsoft Bing, will automatically be allowed to show all public photos and videos from your professional account in search result pages. This will help more people discover your content outside Instagram. If you don't want your public content to appear in search engine results, you can easily turn it off in Account privacy settings.”

From today, public Instagram Business and Creator profiles will be indexed by Google. This is a huge departure from what was a closed system, which will now massively broaden discoverability, allowing Reels, posts and carousels to appear in search results.

What could it mean for your business or organisation?

👉 Encouraging audience growth off Instagram and improving monetisation

All that amazing content you’ve written on Instagram, will now finally be discoverable organically via Google SERPs. Broadening your reach and, if you’re already in the habit of writing good quality, optimised content, then it’s quite the bonus. Those extra eyeballs on your content could drive more affiliate clicks, brand deals, leads, valuable connections and much more.

Want to capitalise on this significant shift on Instagram? Try the following:

✅ Switching to a public business or creator account, to ensure indexability
✅ Optimising your captions and alt text with targeted keywords
✅ Using strategic hashtags
✅ Creating relevant, evergreen, search-friendly content for longer-term impact

But, like everything, there may be downsides

With SEO mattering now more than ever with this switch, we’d expect this to lead to an uptick in keyword-rich captions, alt-text and hashtags. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean an improvement in the quality of content, with LinkedIn painfully demonstrating the battle this presents in reality. The increased competition to be ‘seen’ could mean:

🔴 More noise with less substance, through AI-generated content flooding search results
🔴 Increased pressure to optimise content, stifling and altering the authenticity and creativity of accounts
🔴 Algorithmic mismatching, with content that performs well on Instagram, not necessarily aligning with what search engines deem good content, leading to strategy challenges

Instagram could become a significant part of your SEO strategy, but we’d certainly recommend you refer back to Google’s own advice, particularly around gaining visibility in Google AI search:
“...Google wants to show content that fulfills peoples' needs. Focus on making unique, non-commodity content that visitors from Search and your own readers will find helpful and satisfying.”

Need a little SEO guidance, or social media support? Give us a call or drop us an email - we’d love to have a chat!

07/07/2025

Not sure where to start with reducing your plastic waste? Take the Plastic Free July ‘Pesky Plastics’ quiz!
https://survey.thinkfieldpanel.com.au/wcfs/29402

This is a great way of discovering all the plastics that regularly end up in your shopping basket, helping you to identify some quick wins to cut back or switch out entirely, making small but significant steps to take control over your plastic waste.

This also helps the Plastic Free Foundation track trends in common household plastic usage.

And, you can do a follow-up survey in August, to see the progress you’ve made!

02/07/2025

Thinking about a new website for your charity or nonprofit? Choosing the right platform is a big decision, and WordPress can often be a viable option.

In our latest blog, we explore when WordPress is right for your organisation, and how Bliss can help you make the most of it.

https://www.thisisbliss.com/articles-advice/why-choose-wordpress-build-your-charity-or-nonprofit-website

01/07/2025

It’s Plastic Free July! Learn more about this fantastic initiative: https://www.plasticfreejuly.org

As a B Corp and social enterprise, committed to Net Zero, and members of the Better Business Act, sustainability is really important to us. Reducing plastic waste isn’t just a personal choice – it’s a meaningful step towards protecting our planet.

Our team are already committed to cutting down their single-use plastic usage and, throughout July, we’ll be sharing some of the things we do, alongside useful tips and insights to help encourage more sustainable choices.

25/06/2025

Parkinson's Europe has been championing and working with the global Parkinson’s community for over 30 years.

They asked Bliss to redesign and rebuild their website – combining it with their popular online magazine – to better serve people living with Parkinson’s. Through in-depth audience research and UX design, we created an accessible, unified site that exceeded expectations and supports their mission for the long term.

"Working with Bliss on our new website has been a seamless experience from start to finish. The whole team is friendly, reliable and hugely generous with their time and ideas, and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the finished website. It was a huge undertaking to consolidate such a lot of important content into a fresh design that would help our website visitors easily find the information they need, but Bliss’ clear communication and organised project management style throughout helped us feel supported every step of the way. Thank you!"

Parkinson's Europe

23/06/2025

Today is International Women in Engineering Day (INWED), the primary annual event of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES).

WES is a membership organisation that supports women and girls to fulfil their potential in the engineering industry. Launched in 2014, INWED is now a global movement, shining a light on women’s achievements and inspiring the next generation.

Despite the huge progress made, engineering is still male-dominated, with women accounting for just 16.5% of UK engineers overall. Their theme this year, , celebrates the best, brightest, and bravest women in engineering – working together to drive change.

We’ve been proud to support the Women’s Engineering Society over the years, including promotion of past INWED events, and look forward to seeing all the updates about INWED events across the globe!

There are loads of resources to help educate and support the movement here: https://www.inwed.org.uk/resources-2025/
These include routes into engineering and step-by-step guides, STEM learning for schools, and social media graphics to show your support

You can also sign up to their monthly newsletter here: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/bfQaCFC/wessignup

19/06/2025

Semrush recently conducted a study, investigating the impact of AI-driven search (e.g. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI) and its potential impact on the future digital landscape – and it’s certainly something digital marketers need to pay attention to.

Its top-level findings were:

👉 Within 3 years, AI Search visitors will surpass traditional search visitors
👉 If Google’s Overviews expand further, and their AI Mode experiment fully rolls out, this could happen far quicker
👉 AI search visitors are expected to convert over 4 times better than traditional search traffic

However, other studies challenge the projected conversion rates of AI search, instead suggesting users are far less likely to engage than traditional organic search. In other words, AI-driven search appears most useful for early-stage, informational queries, as opposed to high-intent transactional behaviour.

But what does that mean for your organisation?

If people become more reliant on AI results, this means a drop in users visiting multiple websites, compressing the marketing funnel. As some AI results don’t include source links to content, or links are less visible, it’s likely a reduction in clickthroughs will also occur.

Therefore, you will need to optimise your content to allow AI to easily cite it. So, clearly sectioning your content, Q&A formats, and having authoritative sources.

Read the full findings here: https://www.semrush.com/blog/ai-search-seo-traffic-study/

This is a significant shift in the digital landscape, and one that will need a very close eye to understand the full impact, and what can be done to mitigate the challenges this may bring.

Our research shows AI search visitors could surpass traditional search visitors in 2028. Plus much more.