Calvin January 3rd, 2009
Welcome to 2009! We all know that this is going to be a challenging year in lots of ways, especially for small and micro-enterprises like the typical SOHO Solo outfit (actually, I don’t think there is such a thing as a “typical” SOHO Solo but that’s a topic for another post :-)), but there are also opportunities out there that SOHO Solo’s are ideally positioned to explore.
One such opportunity is the use of technology to help reduce costs and improve efficiencies – and there are some pretty amazing online services available to help small businesses do exactly that. Over the coming month’s we’ll explore some of them – starting in January.
Our usual SOHO Solo West Cork meeting haunt, the Celtic Ross Hotel in Rosscarbery, is closed – which leaves us venue-less for our January meeting. Rather than hunting for a different venue, I thought this might be an ideal excuse for us to try an online meeting / web conference instead.
We’ll be using Vyew, a FREE Anytime Collaboration and Live Conferencing service. It’s something I think most of us are pretty new to… but let’s give it a try and see what it has to offer. From the little I’ve played with Vyew it seems to have great potential for both online seminar / webinar type presentations and collaborative working. There’s also no need to download and install any software on your computer, it all runs up in “The Cloud” – which makes it quick, easy and convenient to connect and engage from anywhere.
I’ll post more details about our virtual January meeting soon. Meanwhile, check out Vyew for yourself – it could be just one of many online tools that could help your business be more productive in 2009.
Tags: collaboration, online meetings, Resources, tools, Vyew
Calvin October 14th, 2008
At the SOHO Solo West Cork meeting today Jim Flynn of MTS Consulting gave a very interesting talk on Time Management for Small Business Owners.
Here are the slides from Jim’s presentation:
Jim covered a fair bit of ground in his presentation… including tips on organising your contacts and a history of your interaction with them, and focusing on the tasks that add real value to your business. He suggested keeping a log of your time for a week, then analysing it with a critical eye to see where you could improve efficiency.
Some of the highlights included:
- Identify the tasks that are really productive (focus on them) and those that are just making you busy but deliver little return (reduce, eliminate or delegate them)
- Look at ways you can speed up your regular tasks – set yourself deadlines and strive to meet them
- Organise and plan your workload with prioritised to-do lists
- Keep your promises to yourself
- Focus
- Monitor and manage stress
- Under promise and over deliver
- Know yourself – how do you work most effectively?
Jim certainly offered plenty of food for thought… and I think everyone at the meeting went away with at least one thing they could apply that would be of tangible benefit to their business.
If you have any feedback, or some time management tips, techniques or tools that you’d like to share – please dive right in and add your comments at the bottom of this post.
You can download Jim’s Time Log and To-Do-List templates (PDF files) using the links below.
Time Management: Time Log (62)
Time Management To-Do List (90)
Tags: Meetings, productivity, Resources, time management, tools
Calvin September 24th, 2008
Last week’s SOHO Solo meeting was an open discussion on how Social Media Can Help Your Small Business hosted by yours truly. Despite some very rusty presentation and facilitation skills on my part (an occupational hazard of spending long hours tapping away at the keyboard), we covered some interesting stuff – and it was great to hear SOHO Solo’s sharing their own experiences of Social Media with one another.
As promised, I’m posting an outline of the “Social Media Rules of Engagement” taken from the social media chapter of my book “Understanding Digital Marketing”. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and every form of social media is subtly different, but if you follow the guidelines below you’ll soon find your feet.
Ready to engage? Enjoy:
THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
Social media offers a wealth of opportunities for consumer engagement and building brand awareness, but in such an open and dynamic space it’s critical to consider what you’re doing carefully. Social media is consumer driven, and the very characteristics that make it such an enticing proposition for marketers – the interconnected nature of online consumers, and the staggering speed at which information traverses the network – can just as easily backfire.
The ‘rules’ of social media are really about applying a bit of common sense to what are essentially human relationships. The key thing to remember is that this is social media – people are going online to interact and exchange information and content with similar, like minded people. They’re unlikely to be interested in your latest sales pitch, and they’re certainly not interested in promotional hype. They want interesting, fun, informative, quirky, addictive… whatever turns them on. When it comes to social media, you’re not just sending out a message, your inviting a response, and what you get might not be quite what you’re expecting. You need a plan to engage in social media marketing, but you also need to be flexible and respond to the community.
- Draw on what you already know: you already have a wealth of knowledge about your customers – who they are, what they like to do, where they hang-out online. Okay, so one of the main reasons you’re getting involved in social media is to get to know them a little better – but the point is you’re not going into this blind. Use that knowledge: apply what you already know about your customers, your business and your brand to your social media strategy. As you learn more, refine what you’re doing accordingly.
- Don’t jump in unprepared: have a clear plan before you start – know who you’re trying to engage with and what you want to achieve. Define ways to gauge and measure your success, with frequent milestones to help keep you on-track. But remember to be flexible, and modify your plan as necessary in response to community feedback.
- Look, listen and learn: before you engage in social media marketing spend some time ‘lurking’ (hanging around without contributing). Familiarising yourself with the different types of social media sites that you plan to target. Go and use the sites, read the blogs… immerse yourself in the media. Look, listen and learn. Just like in real life, every online community is different. Familiarise yourself with the various nuances before you dive in.
- Be open, honest and authentic: nowhere is the term ‘full disclosure’ more appropriate than in social media. Don’t go online pretending to be an independent punter extolling the virtues of your brand. You will get found out, and when you do your company will go ‘viral’ for all the wrong reasons. There are some high profile examples of companies getting this spectacularly wrong, with disastrous results. Never pretend to be someone or something you’re not.
- Be relevant, interesting and entertaining: everything you do should add value to the community, as well as moving you towards your business goals. Be helpful, be constructive be interesting and entertaining – join the conversation, offer valuable, authoritative and considered advice. Make a real effort to engage with the community on their terms, and you’ll usually find them more than happy to engage with you in return.
- Don’t push out a spammy message: don’t join social media sites just to submit a tonne of links and push information about your own products, or flood the community with posts on why your company is the best thing since sliced bread. It smacks of spam, and ads nothing to the conversation. At best the community will ignore you… at worst, well, we’re back to the negative viral effect again.
- Respect ‘rules’: if the site you’re frequenting has policies, guidelines and rules, read them, and abide by them.
- Respect people: always be respectful to your fellow community members. That doesn’t mean you always have to agree with them; healthy debate is good in any community. When you do disagree, though, always be polite and respect other people. They have as much right to their opinion as you do to yours. Don’t get personal.
- Respond to feedback: if users give you feedback, that’s invaluable. Let them know that you appreciate it, that you’re interested in what they have to say. Be responsive, and show them how you’ve used that feedback constructively.
Know a few more rules you feel should be on this list? Feel free to share them in the comments :-)!
Tags: Meetings, Presentations, Resources, Social Media
Calvin September 22nd, 2008
Oops! Forgot to post this on Friday:
- Advice on Working from Home in the New York Times.
- Great interview with Andy Lark, VP of Global Marketing at Dell computers, where he explains how Social Media is the most important element in marketing today (okay, so Dell is hardly a SOHO enterprise, but the way Social Media is reshaping the marketing landscape is just as applicable to your business and mine):
Dell says Social Media is their most important marketing vehicle
Tags: Resources, SOHO Links
Welcome to 2009! We all know that this is going to be a challenging year in lots of ways, especially for small and micro-enterprises like the typical SOHO Solo outfit (actually, I don’t think there is such a thing as a “typical” SOHO Solo but that’s a topic for another post :-)), but there are also opportunities out there that SOHO Solo’s are ideally positioned to explore.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=78094e41-3d2e-4b29-8d0b-01938b13300a)
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