My suggestion is that you take a step back and think about who needs to know who you are and what you do? Then find out where those people hang out. Are they in the corporate world? If so they are likely to be on Linkedin. Are they in IT or marketing? then I suggest you look at Twitter or Google+. Are they a brand? See if they have a Facebook page.

Determine which of these tools you then want to focus on. If you feel that you need to use more than one I highly recommend you use a tool like Hootsuite, which allows you to view all your social profiles in one place – and post to more than one at once.

Finally you need to commit to regular activity on your chosen profile. You can get away with 10 minutes or so a day:

• Update your status, adding useful links or information you want to share
• Respond to any messages and connection requests
• Thank and reciprocate those who have shared your information (Retweet on Twitter, Share on Facebook and Linkedin)
• Look for someone new to follow or connect with (on Twitter try Twellow, on Linkedin use the people search with your keywords)

Once a week you could spend a bit longer:

• Using searches to find out who is talking about your market – look at Google Alerts and Google Reader
• Joining or participating in groups – try Female Breadwinners on Linkedin, WomenBizChat on Facebook
• Joining a webinar or online chat (Twitter chats are becoming really popular)

As you start to engage, participate and share you will see your connections and followers grow.

If you would like any help with any of the Social Media platforms, or in creating a social media strategy get in touch.

If you would like the recording of the webinar Online Profile Raising for Busy professional Women you can buy it here.

I thought it would be helpful to list some of these favourites over two blog posts. This first one around website creation and management, and the second post about other time saving or marketing tools.

WordPress – Of course! I couldn’t live without it.

For non techies it is so easy to use and I am constantly impressed with the functionality you can add to your basic wordpress site with the huge range of Plugins available. For anyone who needs a website or blog that is easy to maintain and update without needing to pay for the expertise it is ideal. I have a split of clients some of whom manage their site themselves once I have built it and others I continue to manage. What I really love is how easy it is to completely redesign the look and feel of the site.

I have recently installed Jetpack on all my sites, which you need to have a wordpress.com account for. It contains a whole raft of functionality which I am still investigating but the tools I am using most are the site stats, displayed on your dashboard, the subscription widget which allows visitors to simply sign up for RSS feeds (how often I have hunted a site for their RSS feed and given up, losing them an interested reader) and shortcode embeds.

My additional favourite free plugins include:

TinyMCE Advanced – which enhances the visual editor in worpress.

NextGen Gallery – for great photo galleries.

Continuous announcement scroller – great for announcing upcoming events.

Exclude pages – adds a simple tickbox to your pages to exclude them from navigation if you aren’t using a customised menu.

WP Smush.it – reduces image file sizes and improves performance for sites with lots of pictures

WordPress EZ Backup – Does what it says on the tin – however, I do use a paid for solution which now incorporates the backups on the sites I continue to manage – see ManageWP below.

Fast Secure Contact Form – creates great contact forms. Again I do have a paid for plugin for more complex forms.

UnderConstruction – provides a Coming Soon page when I am designing or re-designing an existing site.

And another I am about to try on a client site Business Directory Plugin it looks like it will provide just what I need for creating a directory of recommended businesses.

Additional Paid for Tools

ManageWP – My latest and favourite management tool for all my wordpress sites.

I originally had a free trial which convinced me of the value of upgrading to a paid for version.

ManageWP helps you manage all your WordPress sites from one location, keeping them updated and secure. You can access any of your wordpress site dashboards from one location.

But it does MUCH more than that! It advises you when there are wordpress and plugin updates, which you can perform on all sites with one click, as well as allowing you to install a plugin across multiple sites.

Three other great features are the SEO monitoring, the ability to clone a site – great for building a site in a development environment and then cloning over to the new site – and the Backup function. All my sites are now backed up from this central location to Dropbox (more to come on this). This tool is worth every penny just for the time saving it provides.

Gravity Forms – Allows you to quickly build complex forms, including multi-page forms, conditional logic and order forms  Click here to find out more about Gravity Forms.

If I have missed any tools or plugins that you have found really useful please do let me know in the comments. Need help with your wordpress web site design or management? Get in touch.

I am bombarded almost daily with emails for the latest course or tool to market my business and turn me into a  “six or seven figure business” (don’t you just hate that term?) There are now so many “experts” out there who claim to have had a tough time, an epiphany on how to do it right and then created a programme to solve all your problems. My first New Year resolution is to unsubscribe from almost all the emails I receive, leaving only those that are genuinely useful.

Don’t get me wrong I am not saying all of these programmes are worthless, there are some genuine, hardworking business owners who I do follow, but what is interesting is that they don’t have to do the sob story and the hard sell. Their material doesn’t need it.

Here are a few of those who I will continue to be happy to hear from in 2012 – and without trying to be biased they are all female!:

Firstly, Mari Smith – a facebook whizz – who always gives valuable information and whose facebook updates I rely on for information on the latest changes. The other thing I like about her is she thanks you for retweets and follows back all those who follow her on twitter – many of the so called “gurus” are far too important to follow me!

Another great lady to check out whose blog is always informative – and genuine – is Lynn Terry, you can find her at Clicknewz. If you are interested in doing affiliate marketing Lynn has been doing it successfully for many years and has some great blog posts on the subject, as well as how to really run an online business.

My final recommendation is Natalie Sisson, the Suitcase Entrepreneur. Her travels alone make really interesting reading but she is also a great example of how to run a business from anywhere and her blog posts are always either thought provoking or full of useful social media tips. And she takes the time to respond to comments left on her blog.

What success in your business means to you is personal and different for each person. It’s hard not to be caught up in the hype of the latest sure fire way to market your business, but focus on which direction you want your business to go, and take the Christmas period to do some planning and business goal setting for 2012. Once you really know what you want you can then start working on a marketing plan that will help you get there. Take into consideration what your brand stands for and your budget – you can’t do everything so deciding what is a priority, what you can do without and what you could outsource is time well spent.

Happy planning, enjoy the Christmas break and I wish you a prosperous 2012. If you would like any help with your marketing plan, please get in touch.

Beyond The Boys’ Club and Female Breadwinners by Dr Suzanne Doyle-Morris

I am a little biased about some of the titles on here as they are written by clients. However, I still highly recommend both books by Dr Suzanne Doyle-Morris. They are great reads for women in business, especially those either in a male dominated environment or climbing the career ladder to become the main bread winner in the household. Suzanne’s books are written based on huge amounts of research and interviews with professional women. She shares their stories and her own tips based on working with and coaching executive women. I have learned so much from Suzanne over the last two years working with her and admire her hugely. The Female Breadwinners book discusses the social shift that will affect everyone in the work place and makes fascinating reading.

The Presentation Coach by Graham Davies

Another client – Graham Davies, is the author of The Presentation Coach. I love this book. It says what it does in the title – bare knuckle because Graham gets straight to the point with no waffle, brilliance because it works – brilliantly. The book takes you step by step through the process of preparing, planning and writing your presentation so you don’t commit what he describes as “The 21st century’s biggest corporate crime” – wasting the audience’s time. What makes the book so readable – and in places extremely funny – are the author’s anecdotes about his time as a barrister and working with high profile politicians. As someone who has vast experience in presenting to audiences both large and small he gives guidance on the pitfalls you can expect and how to avoid them by preparing properly. But don’t expect to be led gently, this book packs a punch whilst showing you how to – as one of the reviews on the back says – “enthuse rather than euthanize your audience.

How To Build Your Reputation by Rob Brown

This book has lots of tips on ways to build your reputation. It takes you step by step through the process of understanding reputations, designing your reputation, building it and finally how to defend it when things go wrong. There are so many actionable tips that even following just some of them will make a difference to your reputation. For example, in the build section alone there are ’70 of the best tools, tips and tactics to build your reputation’ one of which includes writing a blog – something I highly recommend to those wanting to raise their profile and build their online reputation.

Getting Things Done by David Allen

If you are struggling with a To Do list that would realistically take until next year, scraps of paper with notes you must remember, diary notes and business cards filling your bag, you need to read this book. According to Allen the first key to sorting your life out and removing stress is capturing all the things that need to be done. That includes your To Do list for today, tomorrow and the next year, every note or scrap of paper every thing you have filed in your mental list and all of the items in your email inbox and desk top in tray. Only once you have captured everything can you then make plans for action. Whilst I haven’t incorporated everything and we all slip back into bad habits, there are several ideas I have used and continue to find incredibly useful. And of course if you read this book over Christmas the New Year is the perfect time to resolve to get organized once and for all.

How To say It For Women by Phyllis Mindell

This is a great book for any woman who needs to get her message across on a regular basis. As you read it you will smile wryly at how many of the phrases you use that weaken your message, for example “I don’t know as much as you about this but I think…” And the author is adamant that we remove the F word from our work vocabulary. Not that F word, the verb feel. She says “at work it’s wimpy, weak and wishy-washy: feel fails.’ Add to feel, words that make you invisible and destroy your confidence and you will never be taken seriously. Full of tips, exercises and action points this book will galvanise you to stride into that next meeting and get the attention you deserve. How do you feel about that!

Do you have any recommendations of great business books you have enjoyed this year?

Depending on their business, and the amount of time they have to spend I will usually recommend the top three social sites of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for profile raising online. However, if the client is in the corporate world or want’s to attract corporate clients they really MUST be on LinkedIn.

And LinkedIn have been upping the ante recently and adding some great features. Here are a few that you can use to improve your LinkedIn profile:

Firstly they have made it possible to move sections around. So if you have several current roles – as I do – they used to be displayed in the date order. Now however, you can go to the experience section of your profile in edit mode and as you hover over a role you will see a blue background, you can then click on and move that section so that your roles are displayed in the order you want them to be at the top of your profile.

So by moving this area around…

You can reorder this…

Secondly you can add events – to let contacts know where you are going to be, especially if you are speaking or presenting. And you can see who else has signed up to attend the same event.

Thirdly they have created a skills section. There are thousands of skills that you can add to your profile which create an area of clickable buttons that allow you search for other people with those skills. See below:

Finally you can add video to your personal profile by using the slideshare application. This can really make your profile stand out and look professional – especially if the video is as good as the one shown below:

If you want to see the video you can watch it here. (My lovely client Dr Suzanne Doyle-Morris discusses the changing world of business)

I hope you have found this useful – just a few updates, next time I will be showing you some of the things you can do on your company LinkedIn profile.

If you would like help in polishing your LinkedIn profile get in touch.

With this comes the relaxing of the formal tone that we used in business for many years. This can have both pros and cons. The upside is that it becomes quicker to build relationships – key in doing business now – and giving people that “know, like and trust” factor that is so important online, where recommendations come by word of mouse.

The downside is that you may go too far, being over familiar with someone you have never met, using slang or worse bad language, and damaging your personal and business brand.

How your social media profiles, website and blog look all give indications to the personality of you and your business. Do you want a formal corporate brand or do you want to be more relaxed and approachable. You need to think carefully about the design elements of your profiles – even background colours can make a big difference to how you come across.

When I build websites and social media profiles for my clients it is really important for me to get a “feel” for their business and the key individuals before I start to look at templates, layouts, images and colours. Only once this is done do I start to think about the copy on the site, deciding on the tone needed to reflect the business and ensure they reach the right target market for them.

Personality and target market are also important in determining which social media tools you use. For those wanting to target or connect with professionals and corporates LinkedIn is the best place to create a presence. Facebook for me is younger, more fun and less formal, it’s where a company can let there hair down a little and let their customers see inside the business. Twitter, I think, sits between the two.

Think carefully about your profile – do some research at other sites and see which ones you want to have a look around and which you are immediately turned off by, and try to work out why.

If you would like some help in designing your online brand,profile raising, social media profiles or website, contact me for a chat – I’d love to help.

Thank goodness therefore for the intervention of Not Just Video! I had met Andy Palmer, co-owner through a mutual client and we had started to do some work together. I had also been aware of the great stuff coming out of The 8.45 club using a ‘green screen’. So when Andy suggested I come down to the studio and film a one minute introduction to my business I couldn’t refuse.

The results of the day can be seen on my home page – but I’m jumping ahead of myself. I had been asked to send a script that is loaded on to prompter (on an ipad, which nearly came home with me!) as a reminder when you are talking to camera. Of course it wasn’t that simple – although I had obviously thought about what I wanted to say, it was only with the gentle coaching of Richard Spindler – director, camera man, media coach, an all round calming influence – that the words gradually began to speak from the heart about where my passion really lies. Richard offers this form of media coaching to all his clients, so you can be sure that you will end up with a video that really represents you and delivers your real message.

The green screen – or chromakeying – technology is truly awesome. Although my home page video simply has a backdrop of my website, you can see here the kind of clever stuff that Not Just Video really excel at.

And the result for me? Well I feel a bit like the guy who loved the company so much he bought it! No, I didn’t buy the company but I will be working closely with Not Just Video to promote this great service, as well as being part of their studio days advising clients on their on camera image.

If you are interested in having video on your site, I highly recommend you talk to NJV about your requirements. The studio days start from as low as £225 for something similar to my introductory video. A small price to pay for a great service and a brilliant profile raising tool.

And you can see an example of a video interview taking advantage of the green screen technology here, to put us into an HD Studio environment with a wave of Richard’s magic editing wand!

If I need to know something, get some advice or a recommendation there is always some-one out there who I can ask. And the great thing is I can do it without having to put my lipstick on and sort my hair out (!) – unless of course I want to use my webcam and talk face to face.  People also seem happier to share and open up online too – today for example I joined a women’s business chat on twitter, and I’m sure we ‘made friends’ much quicker than we would have done in person.

So to those people who think social media is a great time waster, it can be but there are some good business reasons for using it for social media marketing, and there’s also some great social reasons for using it if you work alone too.

How do you use social media – would love your comments?

Firstly, Eileen emphasised the fact that it’s not the tools you use that matter – so many people get hung up on whether they should be using Twitter or should have a Facebook page. I always tell my clients it depends on your market, and where your customers are likely to ‘hang out’. For example, one of my clients does a lot of work with large corporates so we put a lot of effort into her blog and her LinkedIn activity. Another client is in a more creative industry and is likely to interact more with potential customers on Facebook. So do your research, think about your ideal customer and then choose your tools.

Secondly Eileen stressed the importance of authority to raising your profile online – why should anyone listen to what you have to say? As she said, and I totally agree, building your authority online can’t be done in 140 characters. Having a platform to provide content that your customers will value, and that will position you as a person with expertise and authority in your market is paramount. Whether you run your own business, or are climbing the career ladder as an employee, writing a blog about your specialist topic will get you noticed. It’s the perfect place to send potential customers – or employers – to demonstrate your understanding of your topic. However, a word of caution – you must be consistent. If you decide to create a blog it’s no good updating it once every six months. Create a schedule for yourself, decide how frequently you will post and create a file – physical or virtual – where you can drop ideas for blog posts, so that you always have topics to write about.

It was interesting to hear Eileen’s advice on how corporates should create a strategy and use social media with some stories of where it had been done right and wrong. Having worked for Microsoft for many years she has an insider’s knowledge of what works well in the corporate world. Whilst the way small businesses work will be different, many of the concepts are the same. I really enjoyed networking with the other women in the breaks and hearing how their views were changing from ”I’m just dipping my toe in” to “I really need to get to grips with this” once they understood the importance for their business.

If you would like help with creating a blog, determining your social media strategy or how to use social media get in contact, and sign up for my newsletter which is full of tips for busy working women.

• Remember that your business brings in money – doing the washing or cleaning doesn’t, so working on your business pays you (unless you can invoice your family for the other household drudgery!) Pay someone else who’s hourly rate is lower than yours to do those chores – it’s money well spent and you can focus that time on your business, and help the economy by employing someone else!
• Keep your surrounding area tidy and organised. I know that if my office or desk is messy I just can’t focus. Make orderly piles or create files to keep individual projects separate. I have coloured ring binders and plastic files for each client and project so that any paperwork is always to hand. I also use google calendar with sub calendars for each client and project so that I can schedule work and then overlay the calendars to see my week’s work in one place. It also syncs to my phone so I always have it with me.
• Only keep in your office what you need or love. Old finished projects and rubbish are a distraction, but having flowers, music and nice surroundings can motivate you.
• Have an ideas folder, both physical and virtual. I rip pages from magazines and dump them in an ideas folder or file ideas in a folder on my laptop for articles that I have read online. Keep a note book or use your phone’s voice recorder when an idea comes into your head – once you have written an idea down you can stop it from distracting you.
• Schedule social media time. I look after the social media for several clients so I schedule in a couple of times a day to catch up, respond and comment – otherwise you know what happens, you start looking at twitter and 2 hours disappear.
• The same with email – I have to admit I still check mine several times a day. But even if you can’t resist reading emails as they come in at least plan to answer them all in one go, it’s much quicker to blitz through them all at once than go backwards and forwards. By the way this works for phone calls too, make them all in one go and you will get through them much quicker.
• Plan outings in one trip – so if you have to go out for appointments especially personal ones like the dentist or hairdresser get them all done in one day. If you have to go into town to the post office build in other errands at the same time rather than going out 2 or 3 times over several days.
• Organise your day to suit your natural energy peaks. If you are a morning person do things that need focus first thing. I do my writing between 7 and 9am after the family has left and the house is quiet, my mind is fresh and then I take a short break for breakfast, when I catch up with the news and reading my RSS feeds.
• If you have a job that needs to get finished and you are procrastinating, set yourself a deadline. Promise it for a day and time – even set a timer, it’s amazing how much having a deadline focuses the mind.

I hope these tips have helped you – if you have any that have really worked for you please leave them in the comments. If you liked this article please share using the buttons below.