Modern business is becoming quite different to business of old and what’s happening is that there is more of a collaborative atmosphere rather than losing your mind over competition and protecting your patch. Don’t be afraid of the Big Bad Wolf of Competition – embrace it and turn it into a positive where you reap the benefit by collaborating. This is still quite a difficult thing for the average small business owner to contend with, especially when you’re worried about money or scared of giving away a piece of the proverbial pie.
Collaboration basically means working together with at least one other party with the idea being that it works in both of your favours and your joint efforts reap rewards for both of your greater goods.
While it is easy to be afraid of giving away a piece of the pie, collaboration is extremely effective (when you choose to work with the right people) because if you don’t have the actual means to make ‘the pie’, then you’re worrying about giving away a percentage of nothing (or very little).
When you collaborate, you have the opportunity achieve a lot more, because you can create a bigger pie so your share is potentially bigger than it would have been if you had waited around on you to find the right time, energy, or shrunken todo list.
The reality is this: I have a lot of things I want/need to do, but I am only one person with a busy business, two kids, house, and yada yada yada. If I have an idea these days, I recognise that I cannot do it on my own and I partner and collaborate with appropriate people.
Photo Credit - Kat Housewife Confidential
I’m very fortunate to have some really good friends on and offline in my life, some who go back a really long way. When I had my first daughter, I had a really unpleasant experience at a NCT meetup that served as a reminder of the fact that much as I loved school, I don’t miss the schoolgirl mentality and over the past year, I’ve felt like that about a lot of the friction I’ve witnessed online particularly within my own community of ‘mummy bloggers’. So I admit to feeling a bit wary and cautious about what Saturday 3rd July would bring when I attended and spoke at Cybermummy, the UK’s first conference for blogging mums.
Much like when I had an absolute blast at a Mums The Boss networking meetup in May, while I can’t claim to personally have learned anything about blogging from the day (I think I’ve been at it for too long), I’ve come away with a wonderful sense of perspective but more importantly, a reminder of the joys of sisterhood. Oh my goodness – yes it still does exist! Actually, I’ve always believed it does but it’s easy not to see too much of it online. I did a lot of giggling and dirty laughing on Saturday!
I spoke about and moderated on the panel about the tricky business of making money from your blog and judging by the amount of people who came over to me or got in touch afterwards, working with brands and/or making money from blogging is something that a lot of blogging mums want to know more about! Sadly, I only got to speak for five minutes but I will be endeavouring to share as much of my knowledge as possible because much like when I talk about dating and relationships, I think it’s so important for us to feel empowered to create our own opportunities.
What I did learn about on the day, other than sisterhood and the demand for more information on blogging as a career, was about experiences. From listening to panelists talk about good content, to wondering if I’d got something in my eye when I listened to fellow bloggers read their incredibly moving blog posts out to the audience in the keynote section, I got a wonderful window into lots of peoples lives and witnessed friendship, support, and collaboration in action. That said, I see it hasn’t taken too long for an oestrogen hangover to kick in as the friction I felt before Cybermummy seems to be starting again. Anyway!
What Cybermummy does need is more detail and practical – people are gagging for tools and tips to apply to their blogs. Actually I reckon it could be a two day event. The great thing is that it’s happened and no doubt another will follow.
A massive well done to Sian, Susanna, and Jenny for organising a great day and an even bigger thank you for having me blabber on for a few minutes!
For a quick(ish) recap of some of my key points on working with brands and making money from your blog, check out my latest post on my personal blog.
Time needed: 5 minutes a day
What can it do: Increase followers and in turn reach, engagement, traffic, and build brand awareness. Also increase relevancy of your followers.
Personally I don’t believe in the whole ‘get more followers’ type programmes not least because they’re quite artificial and you end up with irrelevant followers and being made to auto follow irrelevant people while your inbox fills up with DM’s thanking you for following them and yada yada yada.
However the best way to grow your followers organically and increase your reach doesn’t involve sitting there waiting for it to happen, but following relevant people that people you follow follow, especially if they are in the same or associated market space as you.
You need to put in to get back out. You’re not Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry or Kim Khardashian – you don’t have the level of gravitas to have an instant following.
Choose a key relevant person on Twitter whether they’re a follower or not, and follow the people that they follow.
Ideally you want to choose someone who is already engaging on Twitter (following, following back, tweeting, retweeting) – basically an active tweeter. It might be a competitor, someone in a complimentary business, or someone who has s
Be discerning, follow those that have relevant stuff in their profiles, and don’t waste time following dormant accounts, i.e. people who have not been active for several weeks or months.
Spend 5 minutes each day on this and gradually watch your following increase. In five minutes you can probably check up on and follow 10-20 accounts. Increase the potential of being followed and building a relationship by responding (where appropriate) to tweets or retweeting (recirculating) something they ‘tweet’.
Be genuine, not a sycophant. Also remember that it takes time so don’t get too caught up in seeking instant gratification.
Oh and don’t just accumulate followers for the hell of it and don’t go to the trouble of following people if you’re not going to be actively using your Twitter account.
Help yourself be more followable by having some tweets (ideally interesting ones) in your timeline and have a logo and/or photo.
Hot tip – do it when you’re on long phone calls especially when they’re talking the ears off you instead of letting you get on with your work.
Time needed: 5 minutes a day (or whatever the frequency is)
What can it do: Increase engagement, increase traffic to the page and to your site, build brand awareness,
I started a Facebook ‘fan’ page for my dating and relationship blog Baggage Reclaim a few months ago. If I’m honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it (a lot of people are like me) but knew 1) I ‘should’ have one and 2) it’s supposed to be a great way to connect with your users/customers/readers. It has gathered up over 1200 fans to date and I’ll admit I haven’t done any proper promotion of it, but in the last week I have connected with my readers and increased traffic to the page significantly. How?
By posting daily, short, unique snippets of content on the Facebook page.
Put a short and sweet tip, anecdote, link to something of interest that doesn’t necessarily have to be on your site, post news and basically stuff of relevance.
A word of caution – try to make them informative as opposed to always selling something.
Inspire, inform, teach, and share.
Don’t get too caught up in always trying to get people to buy from you – let them like and trust you first, which is not too different to being in a hurry on the first date. Slow your roll.
I wanted to use old content and my doses of wit (hehe) to provide short, snappy bites of insights on life, dating and relationships.
What do I mean by unique? Don’t replicate the same content across Twitter, Facebook, your blog, email newsletter etc because aside from boring people with the same stuff, there is no real incentive for someone to sign up, become a member/follower etc Most people set up Twitter accounts and Facebook pages and post their RSS feed (often keep reposting) and think it’s enough – it’s not.
In one week, Facebook page visits have tripled, and the level of engagement is about 9-fold.
Don’t believe me – this is the summary I got from Facebook today:
How much time? Less than 5 minutes a day. Save yourself time and if you use something like online Twitter management software Hootsuite, you can schedule ahead in one go.
Where to get the content? I take snippets from my many blog posts.You could post quotes from someone relevant, make up your own quotes, post facts,interesting figures, humour, photos – get creative.
Remember, when you do post about something that is about selling something, your peeps will be more interested because you are already engaging with and informing them.
If like Ali and I, you get a bit frustrated about the whole marketing your business thing, in the spirit of being short on time and avoiding feeling overwhelmed, we’ll be doing an ongoing feature on mini marketing tasks and tips that are designed to make a difference without killing your mojo or sucking up your time.
Marketing is all the stuff you do that gets people to take action with whatever you’re offering, whether you want them to, for example,
- buy something
- use your service
- sign up to a newsletter
- join your Facebook page
- read your latest blog post
- use your discount code
- book your consultation services
Whether you’re running an online store, your own consultancy, blog, craft business, or are trying to build your personal brand, we have something for you. The first post is increasing engagement and traffic by posting short, unique content on your Facebook business page.
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