What has branding got to do with me, I'm a sole trader!

If I had a £5, $5 or …, for every time I've heard that from a small business owner, I'd be a very wealthy lady.

This article addresses those individuals who think it doesn't apply to them. They believe they are too small to have to worry about such things.  That I'm afraid is a fallacy.

It's just as applicable to you the solo-entrepreneur as it is to large corporates.  Cyber-criminals would love to harvest your personal information and your business identity.

Branding is about protecting your personal and business identity.

You need to take a pro-active approach to 'branding', and protecting that brand.  Your 'stamp' or 'brand' should be unique.

From the moment you begin to act on 'that great business idea' you need to think in terms of building a robust brand. More advice and help on branding.

PhotoCredit: Fotolia © F.C.G.

Virtual Assistants test lots of IT tools: we are constantly looking for ways to make our processes more efficient. 

We don't charge clients for time that isn't spent on the tasks we work on, on their behalf.

So we learn to be discriminating in choosing IT tools, tools to help expedite project tasks.

Enter, Paymo the Time-Tracking and Project Management Tool.

Paymo helps me to multi-task.

Oh! I should, at this point, also add that I am not affiliated with Paymo, and have not entered into promotion agreements with the company. 

Multi-tasking is second nature to the Virtual Assistant. I sometimes have 10 different Projects open at the same time.  The first file I open at the beginning of the working day is the Paymo Dashboard and Time-tracking Widget.  Using multiple screens, I can spread the files that I am working on, out across the displays. As work progresses in the week I take Overview snapshots like the ones on the next page…. Paymo Overview Reports.

Peninsular Business Services introduces a Guest Blogger.

The absolute-best-part of being active in social media is the opportunity to meet great people.  Layne Tinsley is one of the lovely people I have met since the early days of my engagement in social media, almost two years ago.

I am delighted to bring you a guest blog from Layne.   Her blogging at ‘Administrative Sparkle’ is always sparkling:  it oozes expertise and enthusiasm, and should not be missed, so I am taking steps to make it the very first website that I endorse here on Peninsular in our BlogRoll.

Between us Layne and I have over 50 years of commercial experience, gained at the workface, as it were, either as a student, a practitioner, a teacher/lecturer or entrepreneur.  Our full profiles can be viewed on LinkedIn the serious networking environment for professional people.

Layne talks about Meeting Etiquette, in her first contribution: this is something we can all refresh ourselves on.  Too many business meetings, and other types of meetings, that I have attended over the course of my career, have fallen short of the best practises.

We can all recall meetings that have been difficult and painfully drawn-out but it doesn’t have to be that way: help is at hand with ’25 Tips’ to encourage it to run smoothly and leave you keen to attend in the future.

One which grabs my attention is #19 If the meeting goes off topic, remind attendees of the agenda.  Sometimes the Chairperson has more than his/her hands full, so offer up assistance by helping to keep the topics on track.

Thank you Layne, I know this blog will be of immense interest to lots of folk in my network.

Promoting our sister website

VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS IN WALES

Our sister website is heaving with good advice for people needing help with Internet Security, Data Protection for SMEs, Social Media.

We promote their Facebook Page below which some might say has been a while in arriving.  We wanted to ensure that we had given sufficient time to the task of researching Facebook before recommending it to our clients to add to their Social Media toolkit.

With adequate attention paid to the permissions and security settings we conclude that it could be a useful tool for some business owners.

Used in conjunction with other Social Media tools it can help to bring a wider audience of potential customers/clients forward and into the sales funnel.

A screenshot of our Facebook Business Page at Virtual Assistants in Wales

Best possible use has been made of the additional Tabs feature. We have added a Welcome Tab which announces “Hello, this is how we can help you’, and an Enquiry Form which encourages people to send us enquiries for various services.

Virtual Assistants in Wales is also well represented on Twitter so we have added a Tab which relays all of the Tweets from our main account at @LadyBizBiz.

There are subsidiary accounts to look out for on Twitter too:

@ParaTecVA          For more technical work

@BizGodmother     For more family/home based assistance

@GowerBizAngel   For locally based assignments in the Swansea/Gower area

There is also a YouTube Tab that utilises the videos from Ladybizbiz’s Channel.

The main considerations in using the Business Page is that you must have ‘Admin’ Rights in order to add extra Tabs to the account.

If you have used the older Facebook Profile account you will only take a short while to adapt to the structure of the Business Page. The main point to remember is you will be switching between them frequently because for some bizarre reason you can only import the Apps while you are within the Personal Profile.

Controls and Permissions

You have total control over what appears in your Business Page Wall. You might have selected to follow a favourite business, or a client’s business but you don’t have to allow ALL their updates into your stream.  You can select to Hide their updates individually or completely.

Sometimes the volume of updates that people make to their Facebook account is astounding. I repeat, you don’t have to allow them all onto your Wall: you can sift through them, allowing only the ones you want to remain there.  You may have ‘LIKED’ them but you don’t have to like the volume.

On the Personal Profiles we have been used to adding Friends, now with the Business Page, we ‘Like’ other business’ and sincerely hope that they will return the compliment. (But, don’t hold your breath).

Curation in Social Media

Facebook, like all other Social Media platforms, needs close moderation in order to run smoothly.  If you choose it as part of your toolkit it will need attending on a daily basis, at the very least. If you are short on time for curating your Social Media accounts then the sensible option is to outsource the task to professional moderators.

Virtual Assistants in Wales offers a Social Media Curation Service. Let our ‘super Social Media sisters‘ help you.

Don’t panick we can help you with your email management.

If you are thinking “What’s the stress in managing email”?    You are obviously a person who is well versed in the use of IT tools and possesses a solid skill-set.   This blog post is here to help those who aren’t quite there yet.

You feel like you are drowning in a sea of mail. We can help!

What you need is a strategy for managing your email, and that might well mean managing multiple accounts.  The recommendations I make here involve a combination of things:

• Setting up a Master Account
• Routing multiple accounts through to your Master account
• Using the services of a Virtual Assistant to manage the process seamlessly.

You’ve reached a point where your distaste for and aversion to IT is out weighed by the realisation of just how essential it is to give your business an edge over your competitors    …………….   continued.

I couldn’t agree more …. Deborah Meaden warns new businesses must be relevant RIGHT NOW!

Make your business relevant right now and you gain an advantage over those whose businesses are not.   With up-to-the-minute relevance you have an edge: it’s that edge that will provide you with an impetus to succeed in an extremely difficult environment.

Recent Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) figures revealed that 45% of new businesses fail within the 3-5 year time scale.   They fail for all sorts of reasons:

• Limited start-up capital
• Absence of skills
• Lack of brand strength in competitive markets
• Bad business plan
• Inability to adopt and capitalise on IT
• Disregard for keeping the business agile

I could go on … suffice to say unless you have a realistic expectation of running your own business you will probably end up amongst the figures quoted annually, as having started a business, and failed.

Listen carefully to the characteristics Deborah Meaden presents as essential for successful entrepreneurship.   It’s down to earth common sense at the end of the day.  You needn’t be an extrovert with an exuberant life force …. however the skills she lists are crucial in my opinion, which is why I invite you to step into the interview she gives here for ‘Business Zone’ at Google HQ London, during Entrepreneur Week 2010.

Winners of the Enterprising Britain Award 2010 were Rotherham Ready, Yorkshire who help young people into business and claim an 81% success rate for those businesses after 5 years of trading!   Now that is impressive!   Well done Rotherham Ready!

Our Prime Minister wants the next decade to be one which is “the most entrepreneurial and dynamic in our history”.

That’s a wonderful sentiment but let’s keep Deborah Meaden’s words in mind:  new businesses have to be relevant for NOW.    I think I’ll add to that …. they must be relevant for NOW and they have to be FUTURE-PROOF.

There are basic security essentials that Peninsular Business Services can help you to understand and implement.

Every organisation no matter how small, should make sure it’s data is protected – data at rest, data in motion and data at end point.

There are obligations to fulfil … not least a duty of care to your clients and customers.  In a worst case scenario, you could be fined by the Information Commissioners Office for neglecting to protect data that you hold.  You may need help to stay out of trouble …. continued.

PhotoCredit: Fotolia ©Vladislav Kochelaevs

Grown men quaking in their shoes; students screwing up their faces in indignation; pretty young secretaries deflated on seeing their 'so-called' perfect shorthand script crawling with red ink, I've seen it all!

No-one loves the Proofreader! If only I had a fiver for every script I've marked for examination bodies, letters I've corrected for bosses and homework I've sent back to be re-done … I'd be a millionaire.

Proofreading isn't a horrible job, it's a routine job performed to a professional standard.  Here's a perspective you will I hope, find interesting and entertaining ….. continued

It really doesn’t matter whether you sell computer hardware, fine handmade soaps, luxury fashion items, cars, bathrooms, garden gates, or dog collars, social media is going to help your business brand get traction in the market.

Why is it that some enterprises still don’t ‘GET IT’?

I liked this video - Chris Pirillo talks about a small business in Seattle called Pooper Trooper.  The company has a very clear understanding of social media.  They use the power of social media to pull consumers to their product … a product they know is of enormous value to their potential customers.

If you would actually like to view the Pooper Trooper’s YouTube Video, then click here.

It should be an issue but all too often it seems business owners are too busy or too scared of the technology to get a plan together for tackling data security.

I recently posted a question on a professional forum on LinkedIn:

“How do we get the message out to those who need it most”?

I’ve selected two of the respondents answers, two great responses by top-notch individuals within the IT industry in UK.

Oli Rhys, a Business ICT Advisor for one of the Welsh local councils and Tomasz Bergiel, business owner of a web design company The Mint Factory.

Read the full script here.