Social Media - a numbers game?!

Yes, I am back! After feeling totally inspired after watching ‘Be Your Own Boss’ with Richard Reed CEO of Innocent on Wednesday night, I felt the need to write!

It was fantastic to see so many people looking to set up on their own business, and seeing the amazing creativity out there, especially amongst young people! Although, there were some, how shall we put it, unique ideas ;-)

The thing that hit me most when the final 3 made it through to meet with Richard Reed and pitch for the seed funding was the lack of understanding of social media. One of the teams said they had over a 1000 likes on Facebook so expected to see massive sales once their website went live. Richard very quickly put them right that ‘Likes’ do not equate to sales!

My ’concerns’ with Facebook over other social media platforms such as my beloved Twitter, are well documented. However, over the past few months I am beginning to see some benefits – shock horror! I still whole heartedly believe though that it is very much dependent on your type of business if it will work for you.

I was recently asked by a friend to like a Facebook page, so I duly popped over to see what it was all about and I was disappointed to see that they hadn’t posted in over a month and were just ‘chasing numbers’ thinking that the more likes they had would increase traffic to their site. Now of course all likes are good, but asking someone just to a like page when you aren’t posting interacting with people just defeats the point!

Sadly, Social Media is not the quick fix solution to building a new business it takes effort and a LOT of time! It’s an immensely powerful tool but you have to be committed.

It goes back to my little old analogy about social media and how it relates to ‘real life’ networking as I believe they should be treated exactly the same!

• see your auto tweets/posts as handing out your business cards to people telling them what you do

• your interactions are your conversations amongst the people in the group and connecting possible contacts (re-tweets/re-posts)

• And your DM’s/ Personal Messages are for the next stage when you start talking about possible business together, where you wouldn’t want the whole world listening!

I believe Social Media is not a numbers game! When starting out it is far better to have 100 quality followers/likes that re-post/re-tweet your content rather than go out all guns blazing after thousands. Growing your accounts organically is the key to success!

Missing the point?! - Part II

 

I was quite astounded by the response to my last blog post ‘Missing the Point’ so I thought I would follow it up with Part 2!

There is no denying Twitter is amazing, whether you are selling a product or service, looking for a lost dog or tweeting a celebrity, the possibilities are endless! There are no hard and fast rules about how to use it, and I would like to think common sense applies – but to my horror it doesn’t!

 

OK, common sense in general seems to be disappearing before our very eyes but that is a whole other blog post! However, when it comes to Twitter you would have thought that a little would apply! Maybe? Well apparently not!

So what I am referring to you wonder? Well, the fact that people follow people in the same industry as they are in & then tweet them offering them their services! Surely if you have read the bio about the person you are following you shouldn’t have the ‘one tweet fits all’ approach? Auto responders are one of my pet hates as it just shows people are not interested in what someone is doing and just chasing the numbers. I get followed by lots of VA’s and that is absolutely fine, it is great to connect with other people doing the same thing, but then don’t tweet me telling me how you could support my business!

Now I have ‘process’ when deciding who to follow, yes a little Monica but as we all know, that is what I am about ;-) So I am going to let you into a little secret now & tell you my process!

• Profile Pic – still an egg? Not a good look!

• Bio – blank or little or no information – still not looking good!

• Twitter feed – this hard to judge but generally I will look for at least 2/3 interactions with other accounts within the last day or so to give me an idea of how active they are of if they are just trying to tell/sell me something. If it just constant tweets & re-tweets, sorry not going to get a follow.

I may not always get time to do a personal thank you or my SAS tweet to all my new followers, but I would never send my ‘Business in a mess, call in the SAS’ tweet to someone I can clearly see is in the same business, I would adjust my tweet accordingly to reflect that I have taken the time to see what they do.

I know people will think I am being more than a bit Monica about this (and yes I probably am!) but I see Twitter like one giant daily networking meeting. My latest little analogy on how you should use Twitter is:

• see your auto tweets as handing out your business cards to people telling them what you do

• your interactions are your conversations amongst the people in the group and connecting possible contacts (re-tweets)

• And your DM’s are for the next stage when you start talking about possible business together, where you wouldn’t want the whole world listening!

Maybe I am over analysing and I am missing the point, I don’t know! All I do know is Twitter has been fantastic for my business and long may that continue, with a large side order of common sense pie on the side ;-)

Missing the point?!

Haven’t blogged for a while as had a crazy few weeks but I saw something today on Twitter and it really got to me! I have been followed by a company, who then decided to tweet me saying that they had followed me would I please follow them back? Now normally I have no issue with following people back as I love connecting with the wonderful eclectic bunch of people on Twitter but this approach really aggravated me! I then decided to look at their account and low & behold their entire feed was the same tweet, asking people to follow them back with every hash tag known to mankind for business networking on the end of it!

For me they have missed the point of Twitter completely & are only in it for the numbers! There were 3 re-tweets I could see within the last few days of feed but not one interaction with another account!

As I always say, I am in no way a Social Media expert but I think everyone knows of my Twitter addiction ;o) I am currently looking after 5 different accounts for various clients that I work with & I understand that each account needs a slightly different approach in what they want to achieve but the key thing with all of them is engagement! People don’t just want to be bombarded with constant sales tweets without a little bit of something back, a re-tweet here & there or a comment on something they have said.

It makes me quite mad that people take this for granted and don’t see what an amazing tool Twitter is in their marketing strategy. I had the pleasure of sharing my love of Twitter with a friend of mine earlier this week as she wanted to promote her photographic business & within 4 days she now has over 120 followers all of which she has had some interaction/engagement with. She knows it is not a race to hit x of amount of followers but that her account should grow organically as she develops relationships with people.

During the time she was here & I was explaining Twitter, she was gobsmacked at the information I knew about my Twitter pals, like what they sold/did, where they were based, even sometimes how many kids they had! But, that is just because I have taken the time to get to know the people I am interacting with and that is why I love Twitter! It is no different from me going to a weekly networking meeting, where I would chat to people about their businesses and what they did and then maybe connecting them with someone who might need their product/service, so why are people still missing that on Twitter?

I know for sure that I won’t be following that particular company back because I don’t want to have those constant pushy ‘follow me back’ tweets in my feed & why should I follow them if they are not going to support me in return? Also, if I ever did require their service or know someone that did, I would think twice about using them as they have now dented my confidence in them as a company, pushy sales = no sale to the SAS!

At the end of the day reputation is everything! Don’t forget that people :)

Flexible working – the next big revolution?

I read dozens of articles during the course of a week and many make me think but not many actually make me want to write about it! 

A recent report highlights the huge savings made by O2 when they did a trial ‘working remotely’ day in preparation for the disruption they may face during the Olympics as their offices are close to the rowing venue.

There are many amazing statistics within report; 2,000 hours saved by staff not having to commute to work which meant 1000 fewer cars on the road and a 12% reduction in electricity and a 53% drop in water consumption at the office building! Now, if that was just one day, what would happen if that was on a permanent basis?

There are so many stigmas attached to working from home which need to be addressed though if this idea can ever be successful. People working from home are not any less productive or committed to their work, in fact as the report highlights the 2,000 hours saved in not commuting, staff worked  nearly half that time instead – surely that says something?

Ok, this may have been a one off, or was it? How much more work could you get done by not having to commute x amount of miles to work each day? With the rising cost of fuel everybody is aware of every £ they put in their tank and how much of their salary it equates too.

I know everyone cannot work remotely from home, there are always going to be jobs that require people to work in a specific location like our nurses and doctors or my husband for example – it would be pretty tricky to fit a Boeing 747 in our garden! But there are a HUGE amount of jobs that could be ‘worked’ remotely.

Unfortunately, it comes down trust! When companies start treating staff like grown adults and not children who need to be monitored 24/7 maybe this revolution can happen! I work from home, but I have never missed a dead line or let a client down. I don’t sit around watching day time TV all day or spend hours lounging around. I don’t think it is because I am self-employed either, yes if I let my clients down or miss a dead line then I don’t get paid, but employed staff could face disciplinary action or worse losing their job so why would they take their work any less seriously than me?

We all know that we need to live, work and play ‘greener’ and surely remote working is one big tick in that box? It is not even the ‘green’ angle that makes this a winner – just think of things like booking an appointment with your GP; there would not be that stampede for all the early morning and late afternoon slots if people worked a more flexible day taking some of the pressure off everybody.

Another huge aspect would be that it also enables people in rural areas to stay within their communities as they don’t need to live in towns and cities where the ‘work’ is. They could then contribute to their local economies and keep other local small businesses going.

I am not saying this is an overnight solution to our problems, but with technology developing almost daily, there are less and less barriers in the way of flexible remote working.  Obviously there would need to be policies and procedures in place to protect both the employer and employee but it is not rocket science!

This really could be revolutionary it just needs more firms like O2 to take the bull by the horns and lead the way! 

Vive la revolution ;o)

The day the SAS went to see a Dragon!

So, it has been well over a week since my last blog about winning my #SBS award from a certain Mr.Paphitis and what a week or so it has been!

When I finished my last post I had just about recovered from the shock of winning and was breathing normally again! Skip forward to Friday 30^th March and the day had arrived to go and meet a dragon! To say I was excited was an understatement but I was also a little nervous as nobody knew what to expect.

I travelled up to Edgbaston with the lovely Amanda a.k.a @CrecheonLocatio (www.crecheonlocation.co.uk) and her husband Damian who were kind enough to drive. We were having a relatively smooth journey until we hit the M40 junction of the M25 when we saw the big red X signs for closure – aaaah! So, we quickly decided to carry on along the M25 & figure out our new route plan. Between the SatNav & our smart phones (what on earth did we do before these were invented?!) we found an alternative route –phew!

At just before 12pm we arrived at the stadium and as we pulled into the car park we saw the ‘Theomobile’ and everything started to feel much more real! Me, yes me, was off to see a Dragon!

We entered the building and everything was being handled brilliantly by the team from Rymans, we got our badges and off we went to the waiting area. Now the nerves really started to kick in!

It was the strangest feeling walking into a room full of ‘strangers’ I say strangers because even though I tweet a LOT and often daily with a fair few people who were in the room I didn’t have a clue what most of them looked like! It really was surreal! So you would find yourself looking at badges and thinking 'oh yes, I know you'! I was on a mission to find Kim from @WelshRoyalCryst and Nici from @WoodandWillow1 - eventually we tracked each other down and it really was like meeting old friends!

Whilst we mingled the main man walked past as he headed towards the conference room, he was such a gent and stopped and chatted with people and shook hands. All of a sudden everything felt very real!

So now, the moment everyone had been waiting for had arrived and we were all ushered into the conference room. We all took our seats whilst the Black Eyed Peas track ‘I gotta feeling’ blasted over the stereo. Theo's live tweet feed was being shown on the big screen and everyone was tweeting him to see if they could get their's seen - I was always just a bit too slow!

We were welcomed to the event by the lovely Kypros Kyprianou the CEO of Rymans; he spoke of how excited he was to support the #SBS event and then he welcomed the man we were all waiting for for Mr. Theo Paphitis!

 

Theo didn't let us down in the slightest! He spoke honestly about why he had started #SBS, why he felt passionate about inspiring other small businesses and wanting to share some of his 'luck' to help us move our businesses forward. He joked about how we all shamelessly wrote wrote press releases name dropping him and he said 'I love it, that's why I started this whole thing in the first place'. He then introduced us to the brand new #SBS website and there all of a sudden, I was on the big screen! I has known about the new site for about 3 days but had been sworn to secrecy by the development team and Rymans! Anyone who knows me would have known how hard I found that! Theo then made all of last weeks winner stand up *crimson moment for me!*

  

Theo then introduced Chris from Metal Frog (the #SBS website design team) and he talked us through all the functions on the site, which is truly amazing, Chris and his team have done a fantastic job!

The tables were then turned and Theo wanted to hear from us about what we wanted from the #SBS website and in the future, people came up with some fantastic suggestions and you could tell Theo really was taking everything on board.

Even after a nearly epic 3hrs on stage, Theo then made sure we all got the opportunity to have our photo taken with him & that famous smile never faltered!

I can genuinely say that the whole experience was amazing! It really has lit a fire within me to drive not only my business forward but I am also now looking at other ventures too – so watch out Theo I may be after a seat in the den soon ;o)

The day the SAS heard a Dragon roar!!

Well, where do I start?! What an absolutely amazing few days I have had since my shock win of a #SBS award from the hugely popular businessman & Dragon’s Den star Theo Paphitis!

So let’s go back to Sunday 25^th March, it started as any ordinary day, the sun was shining & spring definitely felt like it had arrived. I had, had a lovely day with family and friends and at 17:30 on the dot my trusty phone alarm went off for me to send my weekly tweet to Theo (yes that is the Monica in me, never wanted to forget!!) Each week since I started entering #sbs I would try & come up with something different to try & get Theo’s attention, I tried ones playing on the ‘SAS’ theme, jumping out of helicopters, great to have around in an admin emergency, you get the picture! But, that night I went with a very straightforward tweet:

"@theopahitis #sbs Been Busy supporting growing businesses all week, it will make my Sunday if I get a #RT from you! www.staceysadminsolutions.co.uk"

Ok, I may have then thanked all my lovely followers individually who re-tweeted my entry, and named drop Theo into every tweet, but hey a girl has to try, and I was on a mission to get my ‘golden ticket’ to the much talked about #SBS Event!

I sent the original tweet at about 18:15 & then carried on with my usual Sunday night twitter madness with all the networking events that take place every week! Fast forward to about 21:10 & I get the first congratulatory tweet about my #SBS win – yes, I got 2 congratulation tweets before THE re-tweet from Theo showed up in my interactions! At that moment, I literally and I mean literally fell off my chair! I then had to remember to start breathing again! I ran straight upstairs to tell my husband who doesn’t really get Twitter, but understood the impact a re-tweet from Theo could have, after I told him about when my lovely twitter pal Nici from @Woodandwillow1 won a few months ago.

To be honest I am not quite sure what happened after that! I know I phoned my mum but the rest is a blur! By the time I got back to the laptop & my hands had stopped shaking enough to type again, I had had something like 183 interactions & they didn’t stop! I started thanking everyone for all their lovely words of support at about 22:00 but by 23:15 I was in the infamous twitter jail! I decided to try & get some sleep & would start again in the morning.  I took a note of who I was up to in the thank you’s and smiling from ear to ear went off to bed. I got very little sleep as I was still in state of shock and so excited at the prospect of going to the #SBS event the following Friday.

Monday came & I was still running on adrenalin, the congratulation tweets didn’t stop all day and I had to write my press release – easy I thought, I do this all the time for other people, was it heck! My brain was whirring so fast with a million & one things I wanted to say but couldn’t get it together! Finally, after about 2hrs I had nailed it and was happy with what I had written. The press release was saved to my website & I started sending it to all the local papers and magazines. By Tuesday morning it had been published online by 2 local papers and will be on print on Friday! To say I am over whelmed is an understatement!

So, there you have it, a blow by blow account of my #SBS win! I hope I didn’t bore you? I just needed to get it all out, lol! The lovely @ShelliBobbins sent me a screen shot of the moment Theo re-tweeted me, which I will forever look at & smile and think ‘the day the SAS heard a dragon roar!!’

To network or not to network, that is the question?

If you are in business you will no doubt have heard the buzz word of the moment, ’networking’ & have invitations coming out of your inbox! But what is networking and is it worth it?

Now, to be fair I have only been to a few a network meetings & they all seemed great; lots of other eager & enthusiastic people wanting to spread the word about their particular business.  There was tea & biscuits and it was all very British, with everyone politely listening to each other’s 5 minutes in the spot light where you  ‘sell’ your goods or services and tell of any exciting news that may have happened since the last meeting. But, in all honesty I did not see the benefit (sorry!)

Don’t get me wrong it was lovely to meet other likeminded people and talk to them about the benefits and pitfalls of owning your own business, and I did hear some useful tips, but I don’t make any particular effort to go anymore. The main reason being the timing of the meetings, most are either early morning or after ‘work’ hours and being a busy working mum of 2 young boys and with a husband that works shifts that makes it incredibly hard.

I know there are lots of mid-morning ones too but they don’t work for me either! I am fussy aren’t I?! I work on a ‘pay per hour’ basis so for me to leave my home office for even 2 or 3 hours in the morning is not just difficult but also not financially sensible! By the time I have driven to the venue, been to the meeting, chatted with people and driven home again, I have lost valuable billable hours and more importantly I am not there for my clients should they need to speak to me.

I totally understand the need for ‘networking’ and I think if your business is a local service such as a plumber, electrician, beautician or something that has fixed boundaries within your area, then I think they are fantastic. But if you sell goods online, or offer services nationwide then I really think you need take into consideration the time & effort it takes you to go to these events versus spending time on social media platforms which will get your message out further and to many more people.

My business is ‘virtual’ in every sense of the word, with clients based up & down the country so I don’t have any ‘boundaries’ for my work area. So, for the time being at least, my networking will remain on my ever faithful Twitter. During the course of any one day I can ‘network’ with thousands of people in a single tweet J plus I can drop in at any time & always find someone to chat too!

And before anybody asks, no this blog is not sponsored by Twitter, lol! Just a twitter addict ;o)

Why it's good to be a bit Monica!

In my last blog I wrote about the benefits of working with a Virtual Assistant, so for this post I thought I would look at the importance of good admin within every type of business and the benefit to your productivity in being organised.

Ok, so it is a bit of a standing  joke with my family & friends that I am a real life Monica from Friends and yes I might take a bit too far, with my ribbon drawer but I think we could all learn a little something from being a bit Monica!

We have all the seen job adverts for ‘administration assistant’ or ‘administrator’ with a job specification of ‘general administrative duties’ but what does that mean? For me ‘admin’ is one of the most over looked parts of any business and not placing a high enough importance could be the difference between success and failure – yes,  I think it is that important! I have heard of many ‘administrators’ being made redundant in the last few years as a cost cutting exercise because managers feel that they can take on the workload, but they soon realise it’s not as easy as it looks!

Admin covers such a huge array of tasks within any business and each one will have different needs and requirements. In my last employed role I was the Admin & Quality Supervisor for a large firm at Gatwick Airport, I supported 4 managers between 2 warehouses and only had 1 part time assistant to help. My role was huge and covered anything from recruitment to ISO document control and everything in between to make sure the operation ran smoothly. In my hand over when I left it was over 20 pages long with all the information about what the role entailed!

Good administration takes time to get to right as you need to find what works for you, but organisation will be always play a key part and for me they go hand in hand.

We are all moving towards a paperless way of living, with lots of us now using on line banking and services, which is great as it makes it easier to stay organised and it takes away the paper element which causes so many issues for people. However, just because you are not filing a hard copy, good filing systems on your PC will help everything stay in order.

If you can immediately put your hands on that quote, that email from a client or that report not only will it save you time searching for it, it makes you look so much more professional and efficient to your clients and that is invaluable!

If you know you can’t be that organised or you can but it will be at the detriment to other parts of your business then it is certainly worth investing in admin support whether it be via a VA or by employing someone – it could be the making of your business!

The Benefits of Working with a Virtual Assistant

My first 2 blogs have been about my love of Social Media and benefits of different platforms, but for this week’s post I thought I would have a look at the benefit of working with a Virtual Assistant like me. I have had a few requests to do a blog on Google+ which I will do once I have had time to sign up & explore!

So, you are up to your eyeballs in paperwork & loosing track of what you need to do but you don’t have the funds to hire someone to help on a permanent basis. You have heard the term Virtual Assistant banded about but don’t have the time to look into it properly. You know you need help so you can focus on growing your business but the thought of working with someone remotely worries you. All sound familiar?

Well never fear, here are the top 3 reasons to work with a VA!

1.    Working with a VA gives the you the best of both worlds, getting you the help you need but without all the additional costs involved with employees such as Tax, NI, Holiday & Sick pay. A VA will only charge for the hours worked & even though the hourly rates may initially seem high, when you compare to the cost of employing someone it soon makes sense.

2.    You get to delegate the work that takes you away from building and growing your business. This means you could offload that customer spread sheet you have been meaning to do for months, that mail shot you keep meaning to do, that research on a new product, or just your general day to day admin – these are just a few things a VA could help with, really when it comes to VA’s the possibilities are endless!

3.    Working remotely does seem strange to a lot of people, as we are all so used to ‘going to the office’ to work, however with all the amazing technology we have available to us it really is easier than most people think. There are file sharing systems, instant messaging, Skype and of course good old email & telephone. I personally love good old fashion emailing, it keeps a perfect record of all conversations and you always have them as a point of reference. The one huge benefit you have of working remotely is that you are not having to supply equipment for the work to be done, (obviously there may be postal charges and other miscellaneous items but all of these would be agreed at the time of booking)

There are hundreds over other reasons to hire a VA but I think these are 3 main stumbling blocks that people may see when considering taking that leap before requesting the assistance of ‘virtual’ help.

If you think you may be at a point where you may need to look for a VA, these are a few things to consider?

1.  Where are they based – VA’s are based all over the world, but if location is important to you, make sure you include that in your search criteria

2.   Do you need a VA with experience in a certain field i.e. recruitment, data entry or something specific to your business?

3.  Is it a particular project you need assistance with or ongoing support?

4.  If it is ongoing support you need, think about how many hours a week/month you would like a VA to work on your projects. That way you can begin to budget how much it may cost you

5.  Which methods of communication are important to you – do you need regular Skype calls, or will email be sufficient?

6.  Use platforms such as Linked In to look for VA’s – it has the recommendation area, so you can see what previous clients have said about their work

7.  Lastly, ask at networking meetings or on social media platforms such as Twitter for recommendations for VA’s

There are numerous websites which can help you find your perfect VA, here are just a few;

http://www.occasionalassistants.co.uk/

http://allianceofukvirtualassistants.org.uk/

http://www.societyofvirtualassistants.co.uk/

If you think you might need some help to enable you to move your business forward, please don’t hesitate to get in touch or check out my website http://www.staceysadminsolutions.co.uk/ for more details about me and the solutions I provide.

Facebook - Friend or Foe?

Firstly, just want to say a huge thank you to everyone for the really positive feedback about my first blog post 'Twitter - whats the fuss all about?' really appreciate all the lovely comments I received on here & through Twitter!

So following on from that, I thought for this post I would look at why I have fallen out of love with Facebook and why I don't really use it for 'networking' for my business! Said whilst listening for a sharp intake of breath from all the Social Media experts out there though ;)

Ok, my main problem is its functionality and the whole thing of pages, profiles, groups, events and all those other little icons down the side that the general user probably doesn't have a clue what to do with.

The whole issue of 'liking' pages is too long winded. Unless you know what you are looking for or have a link, I find it really difficult to search anything and if I want to check out my friends 'likes' it looks like this:

Hardly easy reading is it? Especially that last bit on the end 'and xxx more' who is really or has the time to go through that? I know I don't! Why they ever got rid of the panel down the left hand side of peoples profile's with their likes (and the company logos) I will never know.

I think that is another really important point, as a business you need brand awareness & that list hardly promotes you does it?! You are just in a list with everyone else!

Then my other major gripe is, that if you want to like a page to your own page, you have to go right to the bottom left hand side and then smuggled in there somewhere is 'add to my pages favourites' why not have a' like to my page' button next to the normal like button?!

Then there is the whole issue of sharing posts - I know from looking how my friends use Facebook they very rarely post about products or services, its normally funny You Tubes clips or music videos. When I set my page up for my business only 2 of my friends went on 'share' my posts to their walls. Now, I seriously don't think its because my friends don't like me (I hope, lol!) but I genuinely think it is because either people don't know how to or its just too long winded! Especially when confronted with this & all the options of where & who to share with!

So, from my business point of view, I just don't think it works. I could post as many lovely things as I want & have a brilliant page, but what is the point if no one sees it or shares it with others?

I am sure there will be Social Media experts who can tell me all the tricks I am missing with Facebook (and I would love to hear them, lol!) but from a users perspective it is not the easiest format to navigate & explore.

I think what I am trying to say is I think Facebook has become its own foe - it is trying to tick so many boxes to keep up with all the other social media, I think it has just lost it's way and over complicated things. I think I read somewhere the other day, or was told by one of my twitter pals that there are over 40 different social media platforms - and Facebook cant be all things to all people!

Twitter - whats all the fuss about?!

After being a dedicated Facebook addict for the past 5 years I really couldn't see what Twitter had to offer me until I started my business as a Freelance Virtual Assistant. I had seen one of the companies I was working for use it and had a few friends on there but still wasn't convinced. Then by a twist of Twitter fate, one of the other companies I was working for, asked me if I would look at Tweeting for them as I had a vague idea of what it was about - the rest, as they say is history! I am now a total Twitter convert and currently manage 2 accounts. I am in no way saying I am a Social Media expert, but in the few short months of using Twitter have already seen huge benefits.

So what is all the fuss about?

For me it is about building relationships and networking with other people and businesses you would never normally get the chance to meet in 'real life'.

It just makes good business sense to network with a wide variety of people - especially for me in the work that I do, but I have always lived by the saying 'its not what you know, its who you know' and that is why Twitter is brilliant!

Since joining I have made so many lovely Twitter friends who always retweet my business tweets or updates. Just last week, one of my tweets reached nearly 20,000 followers in just 3 retweets  - where else can you get marketing like that?! Ok, I didn't get 20,000 followers from it, but to have your name and business 'out there' to that many people can never be a bad thing!

Things I have found Useful

1. Use Social Media Dashboards like HooteSuite or Tweetdeck to maximise your Tweet power! I personally prefer HooteSuite as I can have my LinkedIn page and Facebook pages all one place, but its all down to personal preference and what you want to gain from Twitter.

2. Use the lists and favourite functions - great for getting organised and so you can see specific Tweets at a glance. Also look at other peoples list for ideas who to follow - especially if you want a specific area.

3. Be yourself! But remember you are on the internet so if you don't think your Gran would approve, don't Tweet it ;) and don't be a robot - great to use the automated Tweets to have a presence when you cant be on there, but put some of 'you' into it too!

4. Last but not least get involved! The more you tweet the more you will be seen. Re-tweet the things that are important to you or you think your followers will be interested in. Reply to tweets that you can offer advice on, agree with, disagree with (playing nicely obviously!) - its all part of the craziness that is Twitter! Oh, and don't forget to use # tags to increase awareness in specific areas - one of my favourites at the moment is #supportlocalbusiness !

I think the most important thing I have learnt so far is that if you are setting up in business or already running one, there is so much support out there for you. In this current economic climate we all need to do our bit to get this economy going! I have also seen first hand real sales from good networking on Twitter, so if you invest some time it could be well worth it!

Obviously, cant sign off without a little bit of self publicity ;) If you don't have time to manage your Twitter account, please don't hesitate to get in touch - I can tailor packages to suit your exact requirements.