Category Archives: work style

Always reacting? Never creating?

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It’s easy to burn time waiting when we could be creating.

How much of your time is given to initiating new things? Creating fresh projects, generating new ideas, energising your own projects, your own creativity? 

On the other hand, how much of your time is spent reacting and responding to things that come in from elsewhere? Things created by others – email, tweets, Facebook updates, TV shows, blog posts – all of which can be fuel for the creative process, but how much time do they need?

Always reacting to the outside gives less time for the creative to flow from the inside.

Worried about social media? Some questions, some answers and some more questions…

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Blogging, tweeting, posting to Linked-In, posting to Facebook – I’ve wondered if I’m creating a hungry beast that I have to keep feeding? Where’s the time for delivering my service, making my product? How do I manage it all?

These are all valid questions, particularly for a micro-business where you’re the owner, producer and printer-cartridge changer. And they’re concerns that I hear from people who are already in the swing of social media. Last week, though I found a few answers that set my mind at rest.

Some of those answers arrived via a free webinar about Facebook marketing delivered by Amy Porterfield, Darren Rowse at Problogger and Lewis Howes. It was an information-rich hour and it was rich information. Here are three takeaways that are key if you’re a micro-business owner who’s considering Facebook or if you need reminding about why you are on Facebook!

If like me, you’re a micro-business owner, then you’re audience is on Facebook

Facebook has 800 million active users and about one third (31%) are on the social media site multiple times each day. So, it’s a big pond to swim in. Facebook has at least 98% coverage across all generations. So, your potential customers are there.

Facebook marketing is ideal for the micro-business because it costs less

As a business owner, you’ll know what it’s like to pay (in time and money) for advertising, direct mail, telemarketing or trade shows. These traditional marketing channels are all outbound where we’re trying to ‘interrupt’ potential customers.

In contrast, inbound marketing channels like Twitter, Facebook and Linked-In, focus more on being ‘found’. Through social media sites, we create places where potential customers or referrers can arrive and connect and give us permission to market to them.

The point is, inbound marketing channels are more cost effective. Three out of four inbound marketing channels cost less than any outbound channel. (1)

For a micro-business, they are ideal.

A clear strategy will help you ward off the hungry beast

There are many different ways to grow and engage fans but having a clear strategy will help focus your time and efforts. Some of the points, Amy Porterfield talked about are:

  1. Understand who you want to attract to as your ideal audience
  2. What do you want your audience to experience – are you entertaining them, educating them or both?
  3. Automate links across social media and your website to drive traffic to Facebook
  4. Have a custom welcome tab that immediately encourages them to opt-in so they give you a ‘like’
  5. Allocate 15-20 minutes daily to post and respond and engage..

Knowing that your potential customers are likely to be on Facebook, recognising that social media can be cost-effective and having a clear strategy establish a good rationale for using social media.

So, if you’re guessing that you’ll see me on Facebook soon, you’re absolutely right!

But here’s another point and I’m interested in your thoughts on it:

Fans, followers, subscribers expect you to engage with them regularly

Fans, followers and subscribers are only potential customers if you engage with them regularly, consistently and promptly. This means creating a relationship,valuing it, nurturing it and seeing these fans, followers and subscribers move from simply ‘liking’ your business to absolutely loving it! Engagement is critical. And it can be enjoyable and fruitful. It can also be consuming.

I had a conversation last week with a micro-business owner who needed to take a break from her 2700 Facebook fans – no more engaging until January 16. It was essential. She needed to take time out for herself and her family. The office was taking over. She’d given too much to engaging and not enough to herself. Taking a break seems to be a good strategy. I’ve read an article about taking blogging breaks.

The greater challenge seems to be managing it all along the way – keeping content and contact and all the other parts of life singing rather than screaming.

Is it all about personal management? Developing good work practices regardless of the medium?

What strategies do you use for managing it all?

SOURCE: (1.) Hubspot State of Inbound Marketing Report, 2011

7 tips for micro-business owners

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A micro-business is a unique setting. Smaller than a small business. Often no employees. The business starts and ends with you, the owner. You produce the product, deliver the service, pay the bills and make all the decisions about focus, strategy and action. Typically, you decide what to do, how to do it and when you’re going to do.

Here are seven tips for micro-business owners:

1. Develop a rhythm to work to:

Everyone has a different work style so find the way that you work best. There are times of the day that you will be more productive. Perhaps it’s early morning or later in the day. The rhythm helps you find the ebb and flow of your day.

You can define a rhythm by developing patterns that signal it’s work time. Elite sports people develop rituals they must do before their match, their serve or their putt. These behaviours prepare their mind for the job at hand. Rafael Nadal has a complete pattern of pre-court rituals that he says sharpen his senses for playing his best.

I define my writing time by making a pot of green tea that I drink while I write. The preparation of the tea – boiling the water, selecting the leaves, brewing the tea, using a specific cup – all signal writing time and the mind prepares for it along the way.

2. Give time to exercise each day

Working and living well requires exercise to sharpen the mind and to energise the body. It must, of course, be within what’s wise for your level of fitness and advisable by your health practitioners. Find the time and mode of exercise that suits your rhythm.

Explore different ways to build exercise into your day. Think about walking to appointments or riding a bike to meetings. More cities are providing bike-hire schemes for quick trips by bike and better bikeways to ride on. Think about an exercise that travels with you – that needs no equipment and can be done anywhere – like tai chi, yoga, calisthenics or make up your own routine of rhythmic exercise.

3. Make meditative time

Meditative time is time when you are quiet and present. It can come through using traditional meditation techniques. It can also arrive when you’re totally immersed in something you love. Some people find it sitting on a beach, surfing a wave, riding a bike, drawing a picture, stitching a pattern. What’s yours?

4. Streamline systems

In a micro-business, the boss is you and you decide. There are many functions that need to be managed, even in a micro-business. With fewer people to do them than larger businesses, making systems for each function helps streamline the work and keeps you available to accept work, complete it and get paid for it.

5. Decide to decide

Make active decisions. Don’t let the day slide past without consulting that inner voice (call it instinct, gut feeling, spirit or whatever it is to you) about what you’re doing right here now. Is this the best use of my time? Would I be better to do this at a different time? Am I avoiding doing what I need to do?

6. Have a comfortable chair

How you equip your business for work makes a difference to your productivity. Choose well. Technology that is current, suitable and functioning well is important. Be cost-effective but if you have to sit at a desk to work, don’t skimp on the quality of your chair. Choose a design that is comfortable. Make it a chair that you want to sit in.

7. Remember the people who love you

Work gets busy. In a micro-business, unless you’ve established a stream of passive income, it can be tempting to just keep working. Much of what we do arrives because there are people who love us. Remember them. They will be the ones who remember you.