Not only is a blog a great way of connecting personally with your target market, it is one of the best ways to optimise your search engine ranking. It appears that Google puts a greater weight on content in a blog than in a 'static' website.

The point of a blog is to help people see past the commercial literature and help connect with you as a person. Then, the next stage is to build up trust & credibility with your target audience - showing them you understand them, and know what you are talking about.

So how do you go about setting up and writing a blog?

Here are our tips:

Before you start writing, there are three things you have to think about first:

1) why you are going to start a blog

2) The technical aspects of a blog - where and how to host

3) what you are actually going to write in your blog

why you are going to start a blog

If your primary goal is to share your opinions and ideas with the general public, you would want to use a different blogging tool than a user who was creating product blogs as a commercial sales effort.

There are many articles out there on how to grow your business via face-to-face and on-line networking. However, there are not many articles that go into the nitty-gritty of how you ‘work a room’ at a face-to-face networking event. Let’s face it, face-to-face networking can be very daunting. There are many simple ways that you can achieve more with your networking time.

Here are my top tips.

1. Do your homework in advance

By this I mean, ask your host for a guest list in advance. Identify 3-6 people that you want to have a conversation with. Do some research on the contacts you want to meet – what line of business are they in? What may be the particular business or personal challenges that they may be facing? On the day before you go to the networking event, have a quick look at some of the on-line news websites, and relevant trade journals, and formulate an opinion on some of the top stories.

2. Have the right kit with you

I read a great post by Tim Ferris called Why Grow? and Other Wisdom from 37Signals the other day and it got me to thinking. Tim talked about growth and how it always gets confused with an increase in size, whether employees, turnover, office space, number of locations etc. I completely agree. Growth is about what is right for the business, the owner, the managers, the leaders, the market, the circumstances, the customers etc

It then occurred to me that business growth is a lot like growing a bonsai tree.

If you are not familiar with Bonsai growing, it is the art of growing miniature replicas of trees in containers. It originated in China and Japan hundreds of years. It does not involve growing genetic miniatures of existing trees but rather growing small trees from regular stock and seeds. The Bonsai method uses different techniques like pruning, potting and repotting, root reduction, defoliation, leaf-snipping and grafting to produce small trees that are replicas of their full-sized, mature, free cousins in nature.

If you sell a product or a service to business, joining a networking group can be a fantastic way to grow your business. Before we go any further, let’s counteract a myth - networking is not about selling. How many times have you been at a networking event, and been sold to? Like many people, I’ve suffered as well – and let’s just say their business card hasn’t made it into my new business card organiser. To really hammer home the benefit of networking, 80% of opportunities will come to you from people you already know. You have to remember that when you are talking to someone, that you may not be talking to the end user of your product or service.

The main purpose of networking is to attract opportunities. What I mean by this is that other people refer your services on. There are four ways to attract opportunities:

I was at a wedding yesterday, &  was very surprised to find myself informally negotiating with a choir mistress. I am ashamed to say, that I completely failed in my negotiating objective. I’ll explain a little.... I was in possession of the order of service booklets, and was very aware that there wasn’t enough for one per person. In my estimation there was probably only about 60 booklets in total for 150 guests – and the choir mistress was demanding 18 of these for the choir, vicar, bell-ringers and Uncle Tom Cobbly and all. Needless to say, I didn’t put up a very convincing argument and dutifully handed over 18 orders of service booklets.

Earlier this morning, I found myself once again negotiating – but this time with my 2 year old. However, this time, I was very successful and achieved my negotiating objectives.

Whilst the two scenarios were very different, I was negotiating with two very vociferous people, who were not being particularly rationale, and reasonably aggressive in their demands from me. As you are aware, in business you are expected to work and negotiate with some not particularly rationale people.

I've had a quiet spell over the last few months. Nothing unusual in that - many of us will have experienced a slow down in business recently. But, you may be surprised to learn that despite the need to improve my financial situation, I've just turned work down.

Like many small business owners, the need to work, and the pull of real cash is strong, so why did I turn it down?

Confidence: The project was a little outside area of expertise, and whilst a part of me likes to step out of my comfort zone and stretch myself, I didn't want to take a risk with a new client.

Clarity: The brief was not that clear, and I hate committing to something that I'm 100% sure I can deliver.

Care: I would be working as a subcontractor in this instance, and didn't want to let my contact down and potentially deliver an inferior service and damage the relationship he has with his client.

Circumstances: The client was geographically a long way away, and timescales were not ideal for me.

There’s a myth that entrepreneurs naturally like to meet people. The truth is that the vast majority dislike networking so much that they make every excuse to avoid the exercise. Yet, time and again I’ve seen that businesses led by owners who refuse to make new connections struggle rather than succeed.  Customers, industry partners, employees and influential community members do not beat a path to anyone’s door.  They must be sought out if a young company is to thrive.

Too often entrepreneurs and executives chase after more clients, higher sales or turnover and profits without realising that they are chasing the wrong things. If you think about it, these things are outcomes and results rather than things that you can directly affect. They themselves are affected but other ‘levers’ in your business. Here’s a list of some of the seven key levers that exist in almost every business that you should be focusing on. Small maths fact: if you improve performance in each of these ‘lever’ areas by around 10% or more over the course of the next year it could lead top over 40% growth in sales and over 60% growth in profit. Don’t believe me? Ask and I’ll show you the maths. Here’s that list:

There is a discussion going on in the executive village  at the moment, about how to get an embedded manager to be more effective. This is a problem faced by many professional practices and businesses. Ever heard of the phrase 'a concrete layer of management?'

This was my answer:

This is always a tricky one. It's also a fairly typical problem faced by a lot of line managers. You've got someone who is steady, reliable and been doing the job for years. However, time has moved on and their role and responsibilities need to move on to keep pace with how the job, market place and business has actually changed.

I was asked a question this morning by @phrankleen:

“do u know of any tweeting product that helps u get targeted followers? In terms of marketing.”

“and that can send automated tweet whilst am away from d p.c”

There are many ways to get targeted followers, and whilst there are some 3rd party applications which may help, you have to be prepared to spend the time to build up the relationships within your followers.