Karen Skidmore's Kick-Ass Blog | CanDoCanBe

Twitter Stories: How has twitter worked this week?

Twitter: Is it a waste of time or productive business tool?

Not wanting to try to convince the unconvincables, I thought I would just list a few specific examples of how twitter has been useful - and possibly highly profitable - to me and my network just in the last few days.

I'll let you decide whether to embrace twitter or not.

1. Had a registration for my TeleSeminar Masterclass from one of my Twitter followers. She was not on my mailing list nor had I had any commnunication with her before.  She booked because of what she read on my tweets

2. Was able to refer my brother, who runs his own mobile tech biz, to someone who I was following on twitter. They were requesting info on anyone who could help them build an app for iphones.  Wait and see whether that turns in to direct business

3. One of my newsletter subscribers came to me asking if I knew someone who had been recommended to her through twitter. One of her colleagues had tweeted that they were looking for an expert to join a panel for a workshop they were planning. she got 2 recommendations in as many seconds.

4. One of my clients is running a fab new teleclass in a week or so. I tweeted her link and one of my followers re-tweeted to his followers. I also saw that one of his followers re-tweeted his re-tweet of my tweet. [follow my drift?]  Within 24 hours of the orginal tweet, more than 2,000 people would have received that tweet.  (And imagine if your tweet is re-tweeted by someone with 20,000+ followers. Powerful, hey?)

5. Was contacted via twitter by someone who runs a social networking site. We spoke on the phone and he gave me a guided tour of the site.  Would I have accepted his phone call if we hadn't been tweeting each other? Probably not.  I am now signed up and sorting out my new profile this Friday to try out the site.

6. Was able to put a new follower in touch with a local networking group I knew of in her area.  By reading her short twitter biog I noticed where she lived and asked if she knew of the group. She hadn't been but is now intending on going to the next meeting.

7. May have got myself a date with George Clooney - but you don't want to read about that story, do you ;0)

What twitter stories can you share this week?

Marketing Drip Feed is Essential to Survive This Year

As we begin 2009 there will be no doubt that one of the reasons why some businesses will survive and others fail, will be the consistency of their marketing.

Many self-employed professionals have relied on referrals over the past few years.  They have built up a strong reputation and enjoyed a steady flow of client.

But, with the economy in a downturn, it is easy for those referrals to dry up.  Their clients may cut budgets or have decided to spend their money on other resources. And the steady flow of clients stops.

On the other hand, there are many, many coaches, consultants and trainers who have been marketing consistently - month in, month out, irrespective of how busy their are with clients.

And it will be these businesses who will not only maintain their flow of work, but probably gain a little more as some other businesses go under.

Marketing is not an activity that happens once a month.  Nor is it something that you do every Monday morning, to kick start your week.

Marketing needs to happen each and every day, drip fed in to your working week so you maintain visibility and your potential clients think of you when they are ready.

Recession for Some, Opportunities for Others

I was walking past Robert Dyas at the weekend and stopped to read their poster in the window.

Woolworths may be gone, but their customers still need to buy household stuff.  And as you can see from this photo, Robert Dyas are keen to pick up an increased market share.

Are you worried about the recession and concerned about business?

Or are you doing something about it and being proactive like Robert Dyas?

It may be recession for some, but there are plenty of opportunities for others.

Are your clients eating more beans and less organic?

Yet more figures have come out today highlighting the downturn of our economy and how retail customers are changing their shopping habits.

The BBC are reporting that there is an increase of 22.6% in Baked Beans sales and 11% decrease in the amount of organic foods purchased. 

Not surprising really when everyone, me included, is looking at prices more carefully and making decisions on how they can decrease the price of their shopping basket.

But what about your clients?  Have you been able to take a step back and work out what your clients are doing at the moment?

People haven't stopped spending - they are just spending their money more wisely.  And this will be true of your clients, too.

So either get a survey out or pick up the phone and call a few target clients.  It doesn't matter what you actually do to find out, but find out you must.

Find out what your clients are spending more on and less on.  And you can still grow your business by offering more beans instead.

The 5 Marketing Rules for 2009

When the global economy seems to be on meltdown and all around you, you are reading, watching and hearing bad news, it’s easy to get dragged in to a negative mindset. 

If it’s happening to M&S and Woolworths, than it can happen to you, too!

Wrong.  As a self-employed professional who runs your own business, you have many advantages over the big brands.  You probably have very little in the way of overheads.  And you have the ability to be flexible and highly adaptable.  There is no reason why you can’t be successful whilst others around you get sucked down.

But there is no question you are going to have work smarter.  Not harder – just smarter.

These are the marketing rules that I am abiding by this year.

1. Be Focused.  Now we are in full flow social media marketing, it’s easy to get dragged in to the likes of Facebook and Twitter, spending hours clicking links and watching videos.  But ignore these marketing tools at your peril.  Embrace these tools but be focused. Have a plan for each one, automate as much as possible and focus your time so you have the conversations and get straight back to your other marketing and business actions.

2. Be Proactive.  Don’t just wait for business to come your way.  This year you have to go out and get amongst it.  Follow every lead up, reply to every email, return every call.  If you get complacent or feel like a duvet day, then expect your competitors to be the winners.  Be bold, be brave, be proactive.

3. Be Niche.  If you haven’t embraced the rules of niche marketing, then this is the year to.  Woolworths is a great example of what not to do:  they tried to be everything to everyone and just couldn’t compete with the likes of Tesco and Amazon.  The more focused you are on what you offer your target clients, the more likely your marketing is going to reach out and grab their attention.

4. Be an Expert.  Once you know your niche, make sure you own it.  Write articles, speak at conferences, be at the right events, get interviewed.  Become the one person that your potential clients think of when they have the problem you are able to solve.

5. Be Positive. Even when you may feel down on a Monday morning, make sure you are telling everyone how great business is.  If you are active on Facebook, Twitter or your blog, it is especially important that your messages are upbeat and positive.  Be honest, by all means, but if you feel crap and write about it from a negative point of view on the internet - its there for ever.  You want to attract potential clients – not repel them!

What rules do you have for marketing this year? Add your thoughts as a comment below.

Networking is not just for the quiet times

When you run your own business, it's easy to fall in to the feast and famine trap.

Spend 8 weeks marketing like crazy and then spend the next 3 months working on the projects that you generated during this time.  Then your diary is empty once again as the work dries up and you are out marketing like crazy again to get the cash flow going.

The feast and famine cycle is hard work and very stressful.

And this is why it's important not to let your networking happen just in the quiet times.

Networking is not an instant fix to increasing your sales leads.  Many big contracts and projects are awarded because of relationships built over several years.

Being visible 12 months of the year - little and often - is far more effective than the 8 week networking tour of every event in a 40 mile radius. 

Networking throughout the year will help you attract clients and customers naturally throughout the year, reducing the number of stressful *strapped for cash* months.

Promote Less and Charge More

One of the easiest ways of making your business more profitable is to stop offering lots of choice and put your prices up.

Offer "affordable" and "low-cost" solutions to your clients and it is easy to get caught in the trap of constant promotions.  You can see this happening on the High Street at the moment.  Big retailers are offering pre-christmas sales and slashing their prices.  But the low margins mean that they have to get large numbers of customers through their doors to hit their sales targets.

When you run your own business, this is a strategy that rarely works.  It's hard to attract the high numbers of clients you need to make the profits you want.

Here is a simple example using workshops to show you what I mean.

Half-day workshop tickets sell at £45
Delegate rate & room hire cost you £10 per person
Gross Profit per person £35

To make a total gross profit (and remember you still need to take in to account all the cost of promoting the event, work book printing, admin support, etc) of £500, you need a minimum of 15 tickets sold. 

Full-day workshop tickets sell at £195
Delegate rate & room hire cost you £40 per person
Gross Profit per person £155

To make the same £500 gross profit, you only need to sell 4 tickets.  If you sold 15 tickets, you would make a gross profit of £2325.

You would have to run at least 4 half day workshops to make the same gross profit as running one full day workshop.

Which workshop programme do you think will take less of your time to make £2,000?

(Please note, these calculations are simplified.  Do make sure you work out your net profit carefully when running events and don't get caught out by focusing on your gross profit per person!)

Writing a Marketing Plan for Your Small Business: The 3 questions you must answer

Whether you are just starting up your own business from home or have been working for yourself for several years, a clear marketing plan is essential to not only show you what you should be doing to attract clients to your business, but also to keep you on track.

A marketing plan is really quite a simple document to produce.

There are far too many complicated templates that can be downloaded off the internet or got from a business book.  And when you feel you may to produce a 20 page document it can be the fastest way to put off the whole planning process.

There are only 3 questions that you need to answer in your marketing plan and they are:

1.  Where are you now?

2.  where are you going?

3.  How are you going to get there?

And they need to be in this order.

Too many people jump in to the “how are you going get there” question and get bogged down with marketing strategies and tools that, frankly, may not help you bit.

Start with the easiest question of all “where are you now?”. Not only will this help build your confidence up (after all, you should know the answer to this question without much thinking!), it will give you a baseline from where to start building.

The second question “where are you going?” is designed to focus you on targets and goals.  Where do you want to be this time next year?  How many clients do you want to managing?  How many hours do you want to be working? How much money do you want to be creating?

Your destination needs to specific.  It needs to be something that you can measure.  It’s got to have a timescales.  And it’s got to be realistic and something that you know is achievable. (Yup, you’ve guessed it - it has to a SMART goal!).

Once you have your SMART desination, you will find it far easier to answer the third and final question “How are you going to get there?”.

So forget about mission statements and synopsises.  Get to the basics and focus on what’s going to work for you on a day-to-day basis.

How to turn your email contacts in to your facebook friends

One thing that has always bugged me about networking online, is that I couldn't see any easy way of connecting with my email contacts in places such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

It doesn't matter how hard I try to be just a tiny bit like Tim Ferris and cut down my email time, I find that a large proportion of my communication is via email.  And I was beginning to wonder if I was missing out connecting online with many of my email contacts.

Did I really have to go and search for everyone individually on each of my social networking sites?

Then I got re-introduced to Xobni again.  Xobni (Inbox spelt backwards) is a rather nifty outlook tool which organises your emails and gives you a quicker way to search for contacts and their conversations with you.  However, I got rid of it about 6 months ago as it was really slowing down my inbox.

But, its come back in to my life again!  You see, what Xobni does now is not only show you each contact as you click on their email, you also get to see whether each contact is listed on LinkedIn and Facebook.

How great is that?!!! So now, with each new person who I receive email from I can see at a glance if they have a facebook or llinkedin profile.  I can then go in and request a connection.

Online networking is beginning to be even more powerful as I am now building an online network with people I know offline. 

If you use outlook, why don't you give Xobni try?

Business Plans are bad for small businesses

Most small businesses have business plans that are just not doing them any favours.  In fact I would go as far as saying that most small businesses have business plans that are only holding them back.  Their business plans are actually bad for them.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying that business planning is bad for business.

Business planning is essential for the success of you and your small business.

But when it comes the actual act of writing a business plan, most small businesses start with a template downloaded from the internet which usually creates a document of at least 10 to 20 pages.  All the pretty boxes are filled out, the cashflow spreadsheet is completed and the answers to the questions such as "What is your USP?" are answered.

What happens to this 20 page document?

Yup, that's right. In fact I know you know which drawer in your filing cabinet I am talking about here, don't you?

What use is a 20 page business plan that just sits and gathers dust.  That sort of business is really bad for business.

A business plan that is going to get you moving forward is a working document.  It needs to be something that you use each and every day to help you decide what you should be doing each and every day.

A mission statement and general synopsis is all very business-like but it's the actual day-to-day actions you need to be clear on to help you with your marketing and promoting.

So what sort of business plan is great for a small business?

Your business plan should be no longer than a single sheet of A4.  It should answer the 3 questions "Where are you now?", "Where do you want to be?" and "How are you going to get?"

There should be no corporate BS, no unnecessary long-words - just focused SMART goals and a list of bullet points outlining your planned daily, weekly and monthly actions.

Want some 1-2-1 help simplifying your business plan?  Then get in touch and we can arrange an initial phone consultation.  www.CanDoCanBe.com/businesscoaching