1. Use Social Media to Make New Contacts

When you add Social Media to your arsenal, you have just as much reach as the big players. In fact, Social Media is allowing the little guy to shine as it’s all about the personal touch.

Using video not only drives laser targeted traffic to your business – it enables your customer to view you, your products or services and creates a bond of trust. Most sales offline are based on trust and recommendation, so video is an excellent tool to use as creating that trust without meeting in person is harder to do.

Sites like Facebook and Twitter allow you to directly connect with your niche, but the real power lies within the ability for your audience to share your information around. If you haven’t yet created a Twitter account or set up a Fan Page on Facebook – then I would highly recommend you do so.

Make sure that you post things of use and never blatant sales pitches as this really doesn’t work. Make sure that your profile links on social sites like these point to your blog rather than your money site.

2. Get Yourself a Blog in Addition to Your Money Site

A blog is a really, really good idea because when done correctly, you are giving out great info and creating a customer bond without even trying to sell anything.

Blogs are great tools for delivering info, adding special offers, creating an email list and filtering prospective customers through to your main money site. They are also excellent because you can update them regularly and use keyword rich post titles so that your customers can find you easily online.

I’d highly recommend WordPress.org as the blogging platform of choice as it is so versatile. It can be added to your existing website under a sub-domain of yoursite.com/blog, the flexibility of it will allow you to seamlessly blend it into your main site and the features and benefits of all the plugins you can use to enhance your blog are way too long to list.

Check out my post on content ideas for your blog if you need inspiration.

3. Re-Sell To Your Customers

Oh, I know it sounds simple but you would be surprised at just how many business owners who don’t do this. The simple point is; You are selling an excellent product or service, you have very satisfied customers who are obviously interested in whatever you are selling – so why not sell them something else?

You must have your favourite retailers? The ones that you always end up going back to because they sell what you want and are reliable – you know the kind I mean.

How often does an email from one of these retailers pop into your inbox with some special offer? You may not have intended to purchase that day, but when the 2 for 1 offer lands, you can’t resist clicking through….. and spending money! It doesn’t have to be retail, you can apply this to any business model.

You can do this in a number of ways, all of which I advise you do;

• Set up a newsletter for past and prospective clients.
• Send a follow up after sales message – include a special offer
• Cross sell on your site. If they are buying one product, offer a discounted second product or show a list of related items
• Make sure you keep your email newsletter regular so that your customer is comfortable with receiving them and opening them up
• Use your Social Media sites to stay in touch with customers, so that they can always hear about your latest offerings and spread the word
• Say thank you and treat your customers to exceptional customer service. If you do this, they will come back to you without much nudging! They are your biggest asset – so look after them.

4. Use Customer Testimonials and Reviews

As I mentioned before, selling is all about trust, so what better way to let your new customers know that you can be trusted, than letting them see some comments from previous customers.

Depending on what you are selling, you can use user reviews, which are incredibly powerful. Amazon turned the world of online selling with this exact method. It builds customer trust and loyalty.

Testimonials for a service you have provided also go a long way to building a great relationship with future clients. Don’t be afraid to ask for testimonials for the great service you provide. Most folks will be more than happy to send a few words. If you can get them to add a pic and a link to their business, then it really does solidify the deal!

And if they are kind enough to agree to a video testimonial – then all the better. Imagine you have a gardening business that you are promoting online, once you have completed your job – you can take a little Flip Camera (I use one of these) with you to the customer and ask if they’d mind giving you a little video testimonial. If they’re not camera shy and they are delighted with the work you have done, then they’ll happily agree. If not, you can still take some footage of the work you have completed and add a written testimonial from them. There are numerous business models that this works incredibly well for.

5. Drive More Traffic

It goes without saying that the more targeted customers you get to your site, the more sales you will ultimately enjoy. Using the ways we have discussed above, especially Social Media, will certainly afford you plenty more traffic. But don’t forget about the search engines. If someone searches for something you sell on Google – you want to be appearing at the top of that search, or at the very least within the top five sites.

The easiest way to get more traffic is to do some keyword research, find out the terms people are using to find your site or sites like it and make sure you optimise your site correctly.

You can read more about how to do this on previous posts I have written;

Ranking in Google

Do You Really Want to Rank for That?

Constructing Great Keyword Rich Titles

There’s plenty more in the archives, so have a dig about! If you found this post helpful – perhaps you could give it a tweet or hit the ‘like’ button below and share it on Facebook.

And of course, if you have any comments or thoughts or your own tips you’d like to share, then please do leave them below,

Nikki

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If you don’t yet have a blog, you should really think about setting one up. There is a famous saying ‘The eyes are the windows to the soul’ and I like to think of a blog in this way. It’s the eyes to the soul of your business – it’s the welcome mat, the comfy waiting area where people wander about reading the notice board before they decide if they want to enter your ‘office’.

If your blog is your ‘office’ then – happy days!

But again, I can’t stress enough the importance of doing this right.

If you are a business and you are on Twitter, then you really should be directing folks to your blog rather than you place of business. You’ve got to build the relationship first.

There is another excellent saying that is so true of human nature;

“People like to buy stuff but they don’t like to be sold at”

“Think of Twitter in Terms of a Party”

Whereby you have been graciously invited. If your opening line on introductions is ‘This is my company, buy my stuff’ how successful do you think you are going to be?

Answer: Not very!

You will have links to your main money site from your blog, but rather than send someone directly to a sales page, it’s far better to take a softer approach and work on building a good customer/client relationship.

The thing is – even if they don’t buy today, they will remember you for the great information that you provide via your blog, which means they will also be happy to recommend you to others too.

By creating great information on your blog, you will get a natural flow of traffic from people on Twitter who’d like to check out your latest post. They will click through again and again and start to build a relationship. Give them a link to a sales page and they’ll click once and unlikely buy.

Pop an opt-in box on your blog so that people can sign up to your news letter; make sure you give away something of value in return in addition to the newsletter. This could be a report, a discount voucher or something else tailored to your particular niche.

You’ll start to build up a nice list of potential and current customers that will always want to open your emails because they know that you give value first – and of course, your products or service will be excellent too!

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I have created a free PDF for you to download and keep. It shows you how to set up your Twitter account easily in a step by step format.

I’ve also used plenty of screenshots for you, so that you can easily see which stage you are at.

Although it might not be rocket science, there are right and wrong ways to do this and within this PDF I also give you some top tips on how to create a great profile and what links you should be including.

If you already have a Twitter a/c – you may still find the information helpful and you may also know someone who may benefit from the information included.

Just right click on the link below and save a copy to your computer, or go directly to the link to have a look and then save your copy from there.

Best Wishes

Nikki

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Thought I’d share this fantastic video with you – as not only is the information excellent, the video is incredibly powerful. Social media and multi-media are becoming the favourite way to get content ‘out there’ and this kind of video is a truly great way to get your message to as many people as you can.

You can use video for anything, it’s not limited to event promotion. If you sell a service then video testimonials can be incredibly powerful for your potential customers, if you sell products then video demonstrations will substantially increase your sales. Maybe you have a training site, screen capture training tutorials can be invaluable to your students or do you coach? Why not record a few ‘life lessons’ so that your audience can see how great you are and want to sign up with you.

The beauty of online video is that it can go viral and it is easily shared. The information is more powerful than the written word in many cases and the search engines LOVE IT! If you use something like Tubemogul to distribute your videos, you will reach a huge audience. Don’t think for a minute that you can only upload them to your website.

I’ll be digging into video a lot deeper over the coming weeks. We’ll have a look at the simple equipment you can use and how easy it is to get that video recorded and up online – stay tuned!

And if you haven’t yet ordered your tickets for the Brighton Business Mums Conference, then grab them whilst there are still some left. I am one of the speakers in the afternoon and I will be speaking about Social Media – so if you’d like to come and hear that and other great speakers like Annabel Karmel, Antonia Chitty & Mel Macgee – hop over to the site and order yours today!

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Let’s cut through the noise and fluff and look at exactly what you should be doing without spending hours chained to your computer;

STEP 1

I’m sure you have heard of Facebook – more likely you are using it already, but do you have a fan page set up for your business?

A fan page allows you to deliver news, offers and interaction with your potential customers, without any hard sell. There is no limit to the amount of ‘fans’ that can sign up to your page (unlike the facebook groups) and you can keep this separate from your main Facebook account if you so wish. This means that you can send a silly message to your friends wall, without worrying about any of your business contacts seeing it or wondering what you’d poured over your cornflakes that morning.

There are also many additional apps that you can add to your fan page to make it really stand out. Check out Gary Vaynerchuks facebook fanpage for some inspiration. You’ll notice that you land on the ‘Who is Gary’ tab and it looks like a mini site in itself. This is done with the use of an app called Static FBML. Once you have installed this app, make sure you add it as a tab and then you will have a blank page to include your own html code (you might need someone to do this for you if you have no experience with writing code).

If hiring some help is out of the question there are still plenty of apps that you can use to make your Fan Page remain interesting, from Twitter updates to RSS feeds, there are plenty of ways to keep your readers engaged. Check out the apps directory for a full list of what is on offer. And don’t forget to add your Fan Page widget to your blog and website (see mine on the right).

STEP 2

Twitter is the next essential tool to add into your arsenal and contrary to popular belief, the whole world is not on Twitter (yet) which is why it’s important to integrate your Tweets within your Facebook fan page using one of the apps available.

It’s vital to start using Twitter because it allows you to react to both positive and negative feedback quickly and efficiently. It also allows you to make contact with a wide variety of folks in the Twittersphere they may become friends, customers or even joint venture partners.

It’s the perfect place to receive and give advice but above all it allows you to interact with people and show that there is a real person lurking behind the company’s corporate image.

Always use Twitter as a platform to give great value and never a sales pitch. Buy my stuff never goes down well with folks on Twitter so use it to build relationships and with that comes trust which is a platform for long-term business success.

Make it easy for people to follow you on Twitter by adding a ‘Follow me’ button on your website and blog. You can have a more interactive widget on your blog (see right) if you prefer.

Are we friends on Twitter yet?

STEP 3

Writing a blog is essential for any business nowadays. Done correctly it not only serves to bring extra traffic to your site, it enables customers to check out the face behind the name prior to making any sort of commitment.

My personal recommendation for a blog platform is WordPress as it is so incredibly versatile. You can add various plugins to integrate your other social media sites (you can see both my Twitter and Facebook widgets on the right of my blog) and this makes it easier for your audience to stay in touch via their preferred method of Social Media.

You need to add content regularly to stay ahead in the search engines and to keep your readers interested. If you are stuck for ideas on what to blog about, check out my post on Ideas for Small Business Blogs.

It’s essential to write regular posts but these don’t have to be mammoth – a short, useful and interesting post for your niche is often far more attention grabbing than a rambling essay. And don’t forget the power of video, a short little video post can take a few minutes to create but can easily be shared with many readers.

STEP 4

LinkedIn is a great place to have a presence when you have an online business. I would consider LinkedIn to be more ‘Professional Networking’ as it is a means to attract potential employees or be hired yourself.

In addition to the fantastic opportunities available regarding jobs, it also allows you to find potential JV partners within its vast network.

As LinkedIn is an authority site, anyone that Googles your company is likely to stumble across your LinkedIn profile. so again, it’s important that you keep the information current and professional.

There is also an ability to get recommended/receive testimonials on LinkedIn which is a great way to let your potential customers/clients/employees/employers know that you are a reliable, trustworthy and recommended source.

Make use of the various apps available on LinkedIn, you can import your blog and Tweets, add Slideshows and much more. Start your own group and join some of the established ones.

It’s a really good resource for businesses, so make the most of it.

STEP 5

Forums can be a really great place to interact with your audience, meet new business contacts and build your online presence. The danger comes when you join too many and you spend too much time spreading yourself thin between a large volume of them.

The best way to use a forum is to join a few, test the water with a few helpful posts and then just follow your gut feeling. Stick with the ones that you feel will be beneficial to you long-term and aim to post within them regularly.

The point of forums is a little like Twitter but without the restriction of 140 characters. It’s about helping people find answers to problems that you can solve. Giving someone a solution and making their life a little easier is a powerful way to build relationships, so give forums a go but don’t get too wrapped up in the amount of time spent there.

Make sure that you choose a forum that allows you to have a signature because you can direct people towards your blog within it. If you have been helpful/friendly then people are curious to know more so they will click on your signature to find out a little bit more – not because you asked them to but because they chose to!

A good place to find forums suitable for your niche is Big Boards which is a directory of forums. It also allows you to see how active the forums are as joining a dead forum is a waste of your time.

IN CONCLUSION

Social Media is here to stay. It takes the control from large corporations and gives it back to the consumer. It forces out the cowboys and allows the businesses with integrity to shine. It allows a more level playing field because small businesses now have the opportunity to compete with large ones as the consumer can base their decisions on their Social Experience with you.

To get the most from Social Media, you don’t need to be online 24/7 – choose a handful of sites (pref the ones I have mentioned above) and stick to them. You will be amazed at the results you get when you start to implement these simple practices and it needn’t be draining on your time.

• 3-4 Blog Posts each week – 1-2 hrs MAX
• 5-10 Tweets each day – 20 mins
• Integrate your tweets into both your Facebook Fan Page and your LinkedIn a/c
• Integrate your blog into Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Utilize the signature within your forum profiles to guide people towards your blog/site.
• Visit 3-4 forums and quickly scan for posts you can help with, spend no more than 1hr doing this.

So in total, your Social Media campaign can tally up to roughly 3.5hrs each week MAXIMUM, and when compared to the results, is a small amount of time for a long-lasting and valuable return.

What do you think about social media? Is it worth your time?

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YouTube allows you to have your own channel, something I highly recommend that you do. Once you have secured your brand name ie. YouTube.com/yourcompanyname you can then tinker with the colour scheme to match your business – but that’s not where the real power comes in.

Tagging and Keywords

Every video that you upload to YouTube can be tagged with keywords that relate to the products or services that you offer and as Google highly rate YouTube videos, your chances of appearing higher up the search results are massively increased.

Bear in mind that you are not on YouTube to peddle your wares as people don’t head there to be sold to. The best way to use YouTube is as a platform for advice, helpful tips, free services, tutorials, interviews and so on.

So for example, lets assume that you make cupcakes and you want to rank higher in the search engines results pages. You could create a video of you making some cupcakes or adding some amazing frosting – this could be a ‘how to’ style video.

Optimizing for Search

Once your video is uploaded, you can give it a keyword rich title and tags. I also highly recommend some keyword rich text within the description area as this text is also picked up by the search engines.

So if you were targeting ‘cupcakes’ as a keyword, I would suggest a title like;

Cupcakes – How to Make the Best Cupcakes – (getting the keyword both at the beginning and end of the title is always good if it sounds ok).

Your description could read something like;

http://www.mycupcakesite.com – Cupcakes are a real crowd pleaser and gaining in popularity. Cupcakes are often now the choice for weddings and special occasions and in this video I will show you how to bake the best cupcakes.

Darcy McCake

Your Company Name

Make sure that your web address is clearly visible within the video and that you include a link to your site within the description – ideally this should be the first thing you add to the description.

Next you want to add your tags and obviously ‘cupcakes’ would be the first one here, but don’t forget secondary keywords that you can also add. I would go for something like;

cupcakes, “best cupcakes”, “how to make cupcakes”, “cupcake recipe”, “cupcake video”, cupcake frosting” “your company name”

This is a rapidly expanding niche and you could create a real buzz and community around your cupcake videos, especially if you create them regularly.

Getting Customers and Traffic

The more views your video gets, the more it will hang around within the rankings on Google, so make sure you promote your videos on other social platforms like Twitter and Facebook whenever you create a new one.

Also, keep some of the goodies back so that you can send additional traffic back to your website by finishing off each video with a quick ‘For more information and videos on cupcakes, visit our website’.

An excellent way to increase views and to start getting some links in, is to use your video as an answer to another YouTube video within the same niche. Google likes the relevence and will follow the link to your video and other viewers of the video will click through to yours if its within the same field of interest.

There’s lots more advanced things you can do once the video is out there, but if you create videos on a regular basis and follow these few simple steps, you will see an influx in traffic, brand awareness and sales.

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So how do you protect yourself and what is really happening with these bogus URLs?

If you haven’t yet come across one of these phishing attempts, or you have and haven’t realized, let me explain what is happening;

Via a DM, you will receive a message from someone that you are following, so you will be inclined to trust them. The messages will always contain a link and entice you to click. Some of the previous scams have included messages such as;

“LOL – is This You __________ <—– link”

“Someone wrote something about you on this blog _________ <—— link”

If you click on the url, time will not cease – not will your laptop explode but what happens next could expose your personal details to the pondscum of the scam world

You will be redirected to a page which may look similar to the Twitter login page, you will see the user name and password box and without thinking, you may enter your details

DON’T ENTER YOUR DETAILS

Ideally, don’t even follow the link but whatever you do – don’t enter your details.

What Happens When You Do

Stage 1) If you entered your details – act fast. The fake page is noting everyones login details and stage one is that they can access your Twitter account, this means that not only can they ‘tweet’ from it and send the same message by DM to your followers, they can also see your email address and any other details you have on your account details.

Stage 2) They will Direct Message as many of your followers with the same fake link as they can, not only will you lose followers – fast – you will also have many of them falling victim to the same scam. They are also likely to ‘Tweet’ from your a/c with fake tweets persuading people to ‘find out how you made a ton of cash’ and rubbish like that.

Stage 3) Now that they have your details they have potential access to your email account. Do you use the same password on Twitter that you use elsewhere? Maybe your PayPal account?

Stage 4) Once they are in your email a/c, they have access to alsorts of details, probably including financial details.

Has This Happened to You?

• If it has, change your details/passwords immediately. Especially if you do use the same password to access numerous places. Many people believe that the Twitter phishing scam is purely to access your followers – but it runs deeper than that.

• Make sure that you use a different password for different accounts – yes, it can become tedious but use an encrpyted page on your computer to keep track of them all, or a notebook or something like Roboform (I use this) to securely remember all of your passwords.

• Don’t assume that sending DM messages is a safe way to pass information around – it isn’t

• Always think twice before clicking on any URL sent by direct message unless you are expecting it

• Don’t let the scammers ruin your use or enjoyment of Twitter, remember that they don’t get your details unless you log in to their fake page, so if you happen to click on a dodgy link, don’t panic.

I hope this helps you to understand the importance of using unique passwords and the possible consequences if you don’t. Please pass this article on to anyone who you feel would benefit,

Stay safe online,

Nikki

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Welcome to day 1 of the Twitter course. Directly below you will find the Ethos of Twitter which is a little introduction. You have the option of reading the PDF or listening to the audio – or both, depending on what your preferred method is. If you’d like to download it and listen on your mp3 player, you’ll find the link below.

To read the PDF, just hover your mouse over it – right click and choose ‘save as’ or ‘save a copy’. You will then have your own copy to read and keep.

So, now that you have a little background from either the PDF on the left or the MP3 above – lets move on to The Automated Tweet, so that we can really begin to dig into how we can utilise Twitter for our businesses.

You will find the PDF booklet for the Automated Welcome Tweet (pdf below), this will give you an insight on how to set this up, why you should do it and what you can write.

Sending an automated message to your new followers is a great way to connect and build your community, but get it wrong and it can be detrimental to your business.

This pdf report will explain to you exactly what an automated DM is, why you should be using it and the best way to go about using it – once you have absorbed the info, it will then require you to register and account over at SocialOomph.com – this is all explained in the video below.

So – read the pdf and then watch the very short video below to find out how you can set it all up.

If you have enjoyed this taster of the Twitter eCourse – why not tweet complete the rest of the course. It is a completely FREE course that covers everything you need to know about Twitter, including the following;

• The best free tools to make Twitter easier and less time consuming
• How to find the best people to follow in your market
• How to increase your own followers – ethically
• How to track the content you put out on Twitter
• How to manage more than one a/c
• A ton of resources for inspiration on ‘what’ to tweet about
• How to get traffic, sales and conversion from Twitter
• & some more ‘secret’ bonus stuff

Interested? Well, you should be! it’s a completely FREE course designed to help you get the best from twitter.

FIND OUT MORE….

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Karen is a well established speaker at networking events and I have seen her some of her talks, via online video, and they are always full of practical and actionable information.

If you head on over to Karens website you’ll find a wealth of information via the products she has created and also her blog – I’d suggest you sign up for her newsletter too as it’s always interesting and full of tips and advice.

I’ve known Karen ‘online’ via Social Networking for over 2 yrs and I’ve seen her inspire many women and home workers.

So – do yourself a favour and make sure that @CanDoCanBe is on your VIP Twitter list – you’ll be glad you did.

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*cough* …Apart from me?

But you must have been living in a wardrobe the past week to not notice the *buzz* about Googles new offering – Google Buzz!

I know your heckles are going up as you feel you are expected to get to grips with yet another Web 2.0 site that probably does the same as all the others. You may have only recently caved in to the realm of Twitter (after much arm wrenching and persuasion from the marketplace), so why, oh why has Google gone and brought out something else and what will it do for us?

Well, the inner geek in me has been sucking up the Google Buzz goodness and now, for your ease of consumption – let me explain;

• Just what the heck it is
• Why you should be remotely interested
• And whether it’s going to be the new Twitter….

What the Heck is Google Buzz?

Google Buzz is Google answer to the new wave of social media. Unlike Twitter and Facebook who have built up their followship, Google already have millions of users as it’s integrated within the Gmail system.

This means that when you sign into your Gmail a/c (if you have one) you will get a message about Google Buzz and it’s integration. You just need to click to get some more info and set it up. If you don’t yet have a Gmail a/c then I would strongly advise you get one (more on that in a futher down).

Google Buzz is a real time platform – just like Twitter, but there are many differences and no doubt folks will question whether its enough to lure them away from Twitter and Facebook etc And I’m sure there are many loyal FBers and Tweeters who won’t see a need for an additional social network – but – I think you may want to hop on this one!

There are some great features within Buzz, the sharing of different media being the most notable. If you share a link then Buzz will pull back a selection of images for you to choose from as you will see from the image below.

As you can see from the image, you add your blurb and add your link and Buzz pulls back numerous images of which you can choose to enhance your ‘Buzz’ and encourage some more participation. You also get to follow people of interest and they can follow your Buzz stream too.

Check out the official Google Buzz video below for some further insight;

Do You Need To Use It?

Let’s take at a look at some of the facts; Google has hot wired themsleves into an instant hit because they’ve tapped into the vast Gmail userbase. This means that although some people will bitch and moan about it initially (remember the Twitter early days?) they will likely jump on board because Buzz is staring them in the face evertime they check their mail.

What if you don’t have a Gmail a/c?

This is something that I’ve heard a few people mention, they have an email a/c set up, have no intention of using Gmail and so on. Well, to be honest you should really be setting up a profile on Google as it’s a good place for people to be able to find you in the search.

Your Google profile is a great place to aggregate the various sites that you are active on.

You can add links to any sites of your choosing and name them what you want.

So I have the main sites that I am active on including my main business site, my blog, Twitter, Facebook fan Page and Friendfeed.

You will also notice that Buzz is now integrated within this page so you can keep up to date with what is happening.

Your Google profile is a great link to use in places like forum signatures because people can check out a ton of stuff from the one page!

I would encourage you to get a Gmail a/c and if nothing else, get yourself a profile page and start to use Buzz. If you want to, you can easily integrate your other email a/c’s into the one a/c over at Gmail.

If you are concerned about answering email from a Gmail a/c rather that from you@yourbusiness.com then fear not – as you can specify what address your email is sent from.

Gmail is an excellent mail server with some great features, plus there are so many other great applications available for free, once you have a Google a/c  – I really would encourage everyone to have one. But back to Buzz…

Will Buzz be the New Twitter or Facebook?

No! Twitter and Facebook are too established and google isn’t competeing (well…) – it’s more of an added enhancement. As things stand at the moment, you can integrate your Twitter feed into Buzz but there seems to be no plans for a Facebook integration – well, none have been mentioned thus far. This could be something that might deter the ultimate success of Buzz and really an issue that I would hope would be addressed.

There are also a few issues with Tweets being aggregated in chunks, so someone following your ‘Buzz’ might suddenly see a stream of your Tweets and not realize that you tweeted them over a long period of time – the consequence of this is that it has the potential to make you look a bit spammy. But, I believe this is a temporary glitch and will be addressed – in the meantime, I have turned my Twitter stream off.

And although you can aggregate your tweets, you can’t post to Twitter directly from Buzz yet – something else that would need addressing.

Bearing in mind that within two and a half days of buzz being rolled out, Google reported over 9 million posts and comments which averaged out around 160,000 comments an hour – that is HUGE!

So if you sat on the fence over Twitter and only joined in after peer pressure from the masses, why not be a pioneer in Buzz and check it out now. At the end of the day it can’t be ignored – with a user base that far surpasses Twitter, Google Buzz looks like it is here to stay and we all know that the masses go where the cool kids hang – and Google Buzz is set to be cooler than a penguins ______.

Of course, in an ideal world we’d be able to take the best parts from all three giants of Social Networking because as a user we neither have the time nor the inclination to keep flitting from one site to another.

So what are your thoughts on Buzz?

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The awards were launched, with great success, last year and this year the conference is set to be even bigger and better.

This year there are 6 seminars (at the time of writing) covering various aspects of running a business, of these you will be able to choose three. These cover anything from the practicalities of accounting, to the more motivational side of the business.

The tickets are only £20 and include the following:

• Access to the Mumpreneur Conference

• Access to the Mumpreneur Awards

• Access to 3 out of 6 of our Seminars

• Listen to three inspirational Mumpreneurs

• Lunch & Refreshments

• Access to the Exhibition

• Fantastic Networking Opportunities

• Complimentary Invitation to the Mums Mission Launch

There will also be a variety of speakers throughout the day, although they are yet to be announced.

This is a great way for you to network with potential JV partners, gain valuable exposure for your business and be inspired by the many other entrepreneurial women that are building businesses each and every day. You can tap into the wealth of knowledge being shared by the speakers and learn some great tips during the seminars. And who knows? Maybe you’ll even win an award?

The Award Categories

The award categories this year are as follows;

Best Start Up

Best Online Business

Best Business Support

Best Green Business

Best Saleswoman

Best Interactive Business

Most Unique Product

The Inspirational Business Mum

For more information on what each category requirement are, head over to the Mumpreneur Conference Category pages. If you feel your business is worthy of winning an award or you know another mumpreneur who will fit into any of these categories then make sure you get your nominations in by 2nd August 2010

If you are a mum running a small business, then you should check out the Mumpreneur Conference website for all of the details. You can nominate yourself or another mum for one of the awards here.

Don’t forget to check out some of the speakers and organisers of the conference on Twitter as they not only have great information to share, they will also be talkiing about the conference on the lead up. I’d highly advise you add the following folks to your  Twitter rolodex…

Judges

@RachaelElnaugh – Rachel Elnaugh – One of the original dragons in Dragons Den

@PaulaWynne – Paula Wynne – Womens ambassador and founder of Remote Employment

@FinkCards – Lisa Warner – Founder of Fink Cards

@PreciousParcels – Natalie Hickey – Founder of Precious parcels and winner of last years Best Start Up Business

@B72Imaging – Andy Baines – Professional photographer and founder of B72 Imaging

@LauraARigney and @EllaAnnounce – Laura Rigney & Amanda Farren – Event Organisers

Seminar Speakers

@RobertaJerram – Founder of Giant Potential the networking site for mumpreneurs

@AmyAccountant – Founder of Taylor Accountancy

@RebekahHarriman – of R&R VA Services

@Lawyers4Mumpreneurs – Suzanne Dibble of Laweys 4 Mumpreneurs

@glassraven - Sandie Knight from Web Design company glassraven.com

Event Details

Where?

Saturday 18th September 2010
Heart of England Conference Centre
Meriden Road, Fillongley, Near Meriden, Warwickshire, CV7 8DX

When?

Saturday 18th September 2010

Go and book your tickets today – I’ve booked mine and I’d love to meet you there!

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I like to get to know people a bit, use their services or see examples of what they have acheived before making a recommendation, so with that in mind – I’ve decided to expand my Follow Friday and bring it over to my blog.

This way, I can let you know a little bit more about the person or people I am recommending rather than just a short recommendation on Twitter.

So, to kick off this new series – I’d like to recommend Antonia Chitty as my first follow Friday.

I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Antonia, although hopefully our paths will cross this year, but I have had a lot of contact with her over the past couple of years.

Antonia epitomises and defines ‘Mumpreneur’; she is the author of numerous educational and informative books, including the recent Mumpreneur Guide, runs her own PR Agency, ACPR, and tirelessly promotes products aimed at the child and baby market.

I first connected with Antonia when she joined the Web Mums community, she’d regulalry blog on there about products, events and general advice for work at home mums. Whenever I stumbled across a new community of mums, I’d normally find that Antonia was on there too – I started to think she’d been cloned…..!!!

Right up to the point of LABOUR, this woman was working! I kept expecting her to disapear off for a while to rest…but no, another blog post would appear, a tweet or some information would flow down the Mumpreneur information highway. I imagine that the midwife physically wrestled her laptop away from her so that she could take some time out!

Eventually, after the arrival of baby number 3, she did take some well needed rest (she said it was rest, I think she was still mentally planning the next book) but was back with us and working harder than ever within a matter of weeks.

Amazingly she does all of this and still makes sure that she spends precious time with her family, attending all of the school events and being ‘mum’.

It’s a trait like this, a work ethic of sheer proportions, that really make the difference between someone who is successful and someone who isn’t. Some of us may be mums struggling to build businesses around our families, and no doubt our whining of how tired we are can be heard from afar at times – but ultimately it’s all about how much you want it.

If you want success, a business to be proud of, time with your family, a better future and prospects for your children – you have to work and you have to work damn hard! If it means you work between 9pm and 2am some nights, then that’s how it is – no sugar-coating – just facts!

So – because of her work ethics, her commitment and contribution to the Mumpreneur community and because she is a shining example to us all – antonia is my first choice for Follow Friday.

You can connect with Antonia at the following places:

Twitter

ACPR – PR and Training

The Mumpreneur Guide

Family Friendy Working

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• Shoving your business down other people’s throats is utterly tasteless and frankly – spammy. There is only one place for Spam and it is in a fritter (and even those have gone out of fashion). If you were invited to a dinner party, would you walk in and hand out your business card before you’d even been introduced? We don’t do it offline, so why oh why do people insist on doing it online? Do you honestly think that by writing all over my blog or profile page about the ‘amazing opportunity your business will bring me’ gives me any inclination what-so-ever to investigate it further? It doesn’t!

Perhaps if you’d introduced yourself first, I may be more inclined…..may!

• Joining too many groups or forums! Don’t do it, you’ll never have time to maintain them all so just frequent the ones that you find the most beneficial. If you join too many, you’ll be wasting valuable time that you could be ploughing into your business. Don’t get me wrong – social networking can be an integral part of your businesses success but too much can be detrimental – find a balance.
• Going into a social networking site and sucking up all of the great info without so much as a ‘Thank You’ or a ‘How Do You Do’ – it’s just rude! If I invited you round for a cuppa, would you come in – drink the tea, eat all my biscuits and then go without a word? Well, you might – but you’d never get another Oreo from me! You are there to add value, learn from others and make contacts for potential JV partnerships. Leaving thanks for something you have found beneficial will also earn you kudos – it’s a win/win situation.
• Underestimating your profile page – that is where you write about your business in a professional and genuine way. This is where people go, voluntarily, to find out more information about you and what you do. They’ve seen you adding value in the forums or around the site and their interest is piqued – they want to know more. It is far more powerful for them to click through to your page and then to your site than have you ram it down their throats.
• Getting into to ridiculous heated debates – I’ve seen this happen many times. So before you react to anything that you have read, make sure you have all of your facts straight or you could end up looking like a fool. There is nothing wrong with healthy debate, far from it – but an online argument is not something you wish to ruin your reputation with. Talk travels fast and it travels at warp speed online!

And as a bonus – here’s my final tip, learn the lingo! Not all sites run the same way and it’s common courtesy to suss out some of the rules before you go tramping in there in your size 9’s. Take Twitter for example – your first day on there is going to leave your head spinning – by the end of the week after some initial observation, you’ll be tweeting and retweeting (now cut to RT) with the rest of the @Twitterers.

Now go forth and socialise!

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