Tell the story of your product by creating a promotional presentation using slideshare™

No matter what type of business you run, whether you own

• a Construction business,
• a Hairdressing Salon,
• a Nursery School;

or on the other hand you might be

• an author,
• a tailor,
• an online marketer,
• or a voice-over artist, ……..  the list goes on!

A visual presentation will help to reach your target audience, and has far, far more appeal than delivering line-upon-line of textual material.

The key to great presentations is in grabbing the attention of the audience from the outset.  This is what Sean D'Souza means when he talks about creating dissonance:

"The dissonance of the idea has forced their attention. Now that you've got their attention, you’ve got to gently massage your message into it."

The basics of creating an engaging presentation are outlined on our sister website, Virtual Assistants in Wales, and it provides tips and hints on how you might go about creating such a presentation to a live audience.

But don't forget you can deliver that powerful message with an online presentation which can sit on your website's 'Services' page.

Here we want to show you a tool that you might use to great effect for this purpose. 

The slideshare presentation platform:

The Basic version is free and will provide you with an excellent starting point enabling you to make exciting presentations.

Later if you enjoy making presentations so much that you plan on making regular promos, then the Silver Account will provide you with the ablility to make unlimited uploads with no ads on the content. 

Additionally you may use up to 10 videos in the content per month.  That is more than enough power to the pound for a starting point, and all for just $19 per month.

You'll be asking yourself "What's the value in using presentations?"

If you answer 'Yes' to any of these scenarios, slideshare will be of assistance in helping to solve the problem:

• My brand doesn't get enough exposure
• I can't get my message out to a wide enough audience who need my product/service
• My brand doesn't stand out from the crowd

Integrating a slideshare presentations in your digital marketing will help to solve those problems.

• Share your presentations with your social media community via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc to ensure your content goes viral
• Deliver the presentation directly to your list of customers/clients via your newsletter – this will spread your message further than you imagine because people share good things with their contacts list
• Pump it up to pack a punch! Include audio (MP3) in your presentation, add a video within a slide, tailor the visuals to meet the need of mobile users, combine it with ZipCast (groupchat feature)  to make the greatest impact of all.

Have fun with creating your own slideshare™ presentations.

Here are some of my favourites:

• Artwork by Richard Ramsey  Images often speak louder than words
• Managing your Google Calendar by John Robinson Slideshare is a great place to find tutorials
• Fluid Web Typography by Jason Cranford Teague  Seminar Presentation at SXSWi 2010
• The Funny Side of Getting Older by Stonesriver  Reminder to make each day count

There are so many more I could add ….. I wonder if one day I'll be making one of yours my favourite.  Send me a link to them via Twitter @GowerBizAngel ;o)

Digital Inclusion in Wales

Your help is requested.

If you are one the people I have added to my Twitter List called 'Wales Community' you could be of help.

I was contact this morning by the Administrative Officer she asked if I could get this message out to the wider community.  DIW wants to record the ICT venues in Wales where members of the public can go to use a computer.

"We're recording basic data about a venue such as whether they have internet access, if they hire out their computer suite for training and whether they run a drop in centre.

If you are involved in running a venue which has these facilities, or know someone who does, we'd really love to hear from you.

We have added a form to the Digital Inclusion Wales website – please download this and fill it in or pass it on, then return it to marc.thomas@walescooperative.org

Form:

http://www.digitalinclusionwales.org.uk/files/MjAxMjAyMjcwODQ0NDctaHFwY3NoYnp4emZ2YXF4ZGwvRGF0YV9DYXB0dXJlXy1fSUNUX1ZlbnVlcy54bHN4

(you may need to copy this link and paste it into your browser's address bar).

We are only recording venues in the Convergence Area of Wales at the moment."

The Digital Inclusion Framework Delivery Plan was launched in March 2011 and lays out tasks to be undertaken, intended outcomes and targets for 2012 and 2015 where possible. It sets targets for reducing digital exclusion for adults in Wales, for older people, for those who are unemployed, economically inactive or are resident in social housing. The plan lists 15 key objectives and the tasks associated with achieving these targets. Six of these objectives are included in the collated Digital Wales Delivery Plan, which was published on 31 March 2011, along with key goals from the other strands of Digital Wales. 

Welsh Government: Digital Wales           Welsh Government: Digital Inclusion

If you are concerned about digital issues in Wales and would like to join in the DIW Discussion Forum you can register here.

You can find out how the Broadband Support Scheme in Wales is helping communities and businesses within those communities, by visiting this webpage.

Simple solutions to pernicious business problems work best.

Here is my advice.

At some point or other in the life span of a business it get's really tough, so tough we think we might give up and 'throw in the towel'.  It could be for various reasons:

• Cash-flow pain
• Having to sacking an employee
• Raising performance levels 

There are many more situations which test us to the limits as small business owners, but there is one thing we can all do which will help us survive almost anything.

Exchange the negative mindset for a positive one.

When you are in a business partnership the troughs are much easier to negotiate because there is always someone there to consult with and share woes.  It makes negativity much easier to banish – a quick pep-talk delivered by your partner helps you to rise above the doll-drums and helps to get you back on course with a clearer vision.

But who is there to rally the sole trader or entrepreneur?

He or she has to find a way to rally themselves.  This is how to do it successfully.  Make a resolution to change negativity into positivity.

Shawn Achor founder of Good Think Inc., illustrates this perfectly.  He encourages us to shift our mindset: he tells us:

"We need to reverse the formulae for happiness and success."

"Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe."

Listen to his fascinating and sometimes hilarious TED Talk, and as a result I guarantee you'll be thinking differently about the path to success.

Shawn Achor helps people to realise what the 'happiness advantage' means to business success:

"People who cultivate a positive mind-set perform better in the face of challenge. I call this the “happiness advantage”."

Take the advice on offer and tackle it head on.  Choose to adopt a positive psychology by employing the steps outlined in the video.

These steps, carried out with 100% commitment, will enable you to work more optimistically and successfully.   Head to the point indicated on the timer if you'd like to skip directly to this advice.

The whole talk is excellent and I recommend taking a coffee break to listen and absorb the message.

Share your success with me: tell me how you are going to approach re-training your brain.

I have found using Social Media very helpful in achieving 3 out of the 5 pointers: Use a blog to record the 'gratitudes' and positive experiences, and Twitter or LinkedIn to deliver 'acts of kindness'.  Exercise is proving the most difficult of the 5 for me – it must be an outside activity but I hate being outside in the bad weather! 

(BTW It works in parenting too – give a child positive reinforcement each and every day of it's life.  I wrote about A Lesson for Life – Children Learn What They Live.)

Image: Positive v Negative © Fotolia

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.

The next Global Entrepreneur Week takes place from 12 – 18 November 2012. Make a note in your diary now, and click through to pick up more information.

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