I’d like to introduce you to Janet at Beautilicious40. We met on twitter when I responded to a tweet from Janet asking for a website designer. She explained her vision of an online “magazine” for the 40 plus bride. Due to be one herself she had done her research and come up short on finding a website that catered to this market, so she had decided to create one herself. With my style background this was obviously a project that really appealed to me and whilst I am not planning to get re-married (unless my husband isn’t telling me something) I do fall into the 40 plus group, so could understand Janet’s frustration.

The site build was quick and extremely painless – all communication carried out via email and twitter, as Janet is “Up North” and I am “Down South”. Since the site went live at the beginning of April, Janet has continued to keep it updated and fresh – key to ensuring search engine optimisation. We are working on building traffic to ensure the site gets found by those people that need the valuable information she provides, including beautiful real weddings to inspire those starting out in their wedding planning journey. Whilst I will be working on SEO for Janet what I love about working with her is that she doesn’t sit back and expect it to just happen. She is actively making it happen by being extremely savvy with her use of social media – Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter, where she has gathered over 900 followers, and has today heard she is in the top 100 wedding tweeters. If you want a lesson in how to get attention for your business I suggest you check out these profiles and follow Janet!

It’s so rewarding to be involved with a wonderful success story – especially in such a short timescale, and Janet deserves all the success that her hard work is bringing. It proves the point that building a business around something you have a passion for works.

I currently manage 11 social media profiles and growing, so my must have tool is Hootsuite. Without an efficient tool to manage social media I would probably spend all day on twitter alone! As it is I spend about half an hour first thing, at lunch time and later in the afternoon on managing these profiles which include several twitter accounts, Facebook pages and Linkedin profiles. This may seem like a lot of time but that covers all of the profiles I manage.

In the early days of being on twitter, almost three years ago, I did try Tweetdeck but I don’t like the fact that you have to download it. I’m a great fan of cloud based software, and besides at the time Tweetdeck didn’t give me the same analytics as Hootsuite.

So if you haven’t used Hootsuite here are some great reasons why you should take a look at it:

1. It’s cloudbased – so accessible on any computer with an internet connection. And no need to download new versions, they are there next time you sign in.
2. The ability to manage multiple social media profiles, including Twitter, Facebook personal and pages, Linkedin, Foursquare, Ping and WordPress.
3. Posting to more than one profile at once.
4. One click link shortening.
5. Scheduling tweets – I know there is a debate about whether this is the right or wrong thing to do and I don’t do it often but if I know I am going to be in a meeting all day and unable to send a tweet it is very useful. You can even bulk upload a spreadsheet of tweets.
6. The ability to add Apps. I’ve added my constant contact account so that from within Hootsuite I can see the results of my latest email campaign. Other Apps include Tumblr, Flickr, YouTube and Digg.
7. The Hootlet button – add it to your bookmarks toolbar, then click on it to send a tweet about the page you are browsing. Great for sending links to stories as you read them.
8. The ability to have team members (paid version) who you can pass assignments to.
9. Creating multiple streams of Twitter Lists – If you follow a lot of people create a list of those whose tweets you don’t want to miss in a busy stream and add the list to a stream in Hootsuite.
10. Analytics – Standard reports include, click throughs, Facebook Insights and Google analytics with tweet conversion. You can also design your own reports.

So there you have – how to manage social media without it taking over your life – now I’m just off to play on Pinterest!

Disclosure: should you sign up for a pro Hootsuite account I would receive a small commission. Howevrer, I will only recommend a product that I use and trust.

This week I ran an online profile raising workshop for a group of style consultants and it really gave me food for thought. This was a very savvy and motivated group of female business owners. However, since starting their business the online world has changed drastically.

If you are in this position, chances are you may have a website and you may have spent quite a sum of money on your website. But has it been touched since? Is it optimised for search engines and does it still reflect the personality of your business? If not I suggest you take a look at your  marketing and create a new online marketing strategy.

1. Start by thinking about who your ideal/best customers are. What would they type in to google to search for the product or service you provide? this will help you determine keywords and phrases that should be included in all your online marketing – website and social media.
2. Use the google keyword tool (just google that phrase to find it) to get ideas of how competitive your keywords are and find suggestions for others you could use.
3. Now take a look at your website. When a potential customer visits your site will they find relevant content for those keywords they used? If not you will lose them immediately and they may never return.
4. Does your website have a clear call to action on the home page – as well as giving your visitor what they want? What is it you want them to do? Ideally you should be getting their email address, so that you can keep in contact with them. Visitors who come to your site and leave without taking action are wasted opportunities.
5. Does your website represent the personality and brand of your business? Could the copy do with updating? Are you telling them why your service or product? Why you are unique?
6. How often is your website updated with fresh information to keep visitors coming back? Can you update your site yourself or does it incur costs every time you need a small change? Consider starting a blog to keep them informed and interested.
7. Are you communicating regularly with your email list? You should be sending them a regular newsletter with valuable information that keeps them engaged. Then when they are looking for the product or service you offer, you are front of mind and have built up that all important trust factor.
8. Have you thought about social media? If the thought of it terrifies you or you think it’s just for telling people what you had for breakfast you should have a fresh look. At least 80% of our business comes via “word of mouse” how much business are you missing out on?

If you would like help to plan a profile raising strategy for your business why not book a session with us, and give your business the Spring clean it deserves.

Email us today, we’d love to hear from you.

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.

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!