It’s the Andover Business Expo’s  second year and it’s bigger and better than before. There are over 50 exhibitors, some must-see seminars, including a seminar by entrepreneur & star of The Apprentice, Karren Brady.

Bizpro will be at stand 35, and we have some fantastic prizes to give away in our FREE business card prize draw, including an annual licence for an In Touch CRM, courtesy of Nett Sales, 2 x annual licences for Kashflow accounting software, courtesy of Bizpro & PAH accounting, and 4 weeks FREE telephone answering courtesy of those lovely people at Kendlebell. These are just some of the fantastic prizes on offer, so why not come along to say hello and you never know, you may just walk away with one of our prizes!

Entry to the exhibition is free and there are exclusive show offers that could save your business thousands, plus the chance to win a £1,000 advertising campaign on Andover Sound.

The Andover Expo this year features “How To” Seminars, a Vision for Andover Business Forum and a Business Link Breakfast which you can register for online here: www.andoverexpo.biz

Look forward to seeing you there!

In the course we covered all aspects of business – from setting up and establishing a Bizpro business; getting clients, marketing, accounting, networking, etc; to growing a Bizpro business; working with associates, adding value, to name but a few. It was a great week, even if I do say so myself, and now our newest franchisees are fully geared up to go out there and create a great new business for themselves.

So I guess the next step is the introductions!

A huge welcome to Erika Smith, who has taken on the franchise for Bizpro North Somerset, and Emma James, who has taken on the franchise for Walsall & Wolverhampton.

Erika has extensive experience in working across a variety of industries in a variety of PA & administrative management roles. Proactive & professional, Erika always prepares for the unexpected, making her an ideal Bizpro business assistant and with a personal motto of ‘Get it right first time, every time and on time’, we just know Erika is going to do very well in her new Bizpro business.

From the tender age of just 15, Emma was working as a book keeper in her spare time, and has enjoyed an extensive and varied career in PA, Administration and accounts ever since. With a refreshingly positive attitude and outlook, Emma’s confidence and enthusiasm for her new venture, combined with her practical use of modern technology and ideas will make her a valuable addition to the Bizpro team.

All in all, it was a great week, and a really successful course. We’re already planning for the next one, and can’t wait!

Getting Noticed Online

In the current financial climate, many businesses are realising the need to up their marketing strategy to ensure they are not left behind. For some businesses, advertising doesn’t work  particularly well and, unless you have significant money to spend on advertising with specialist industry publications, you could be wasting your money. So,  what’s the answer? How can you raise your profile and get your business & brand noticed and recognised effectively without breaking the bank? The internet is littered with ideas and suggestions on how to go about marketing your business and you won’t need a second mortgage to do it. Nowadays, businesses without a presence on the internet are falling way behind their competitors…. 

There are numerous ways to market your brand online; at the very basic level, you need a website that works for your business. When looking for a supplier, people want to know they are choosing one they can trust. They want a professional supplier with a solid reputation, who represents quality, good service and a competitive price. Your website needs to reflect this, be informative and also provide potential customers with the goods or service they are looking for. In addition, it should be easy to navigate, and as an absolute must, put your phone number on every page. It’s amazing the amount of websites that you have to search for a number. Time is of the essence for most people, so make it easy for them to contact you.

Some of the most basic areas to consider with your website will have a big impact on your ability to be picked up by search engines. page titles, descriptions, tags are extremely important areas and should be completed with your keywords in mind. Each page should be completed as a page in it’s own right, and have a title relevant to the page and your targeted keywords.

When putting together copy for your website, think of it as a virtual salesman. Sell the benefits of your product or service, and not just the features. Ensure you include keywords which are relevant to your site and your business. Think about how others would search for a company like yours and use these words and phrases in your copy. There are lots of sites you can look at that will help you choose your  keywords, such as Wordtracker. They operate by looking at your chosen words, and seeing how often they are searched for. They also compare similar phrases or sayings, so you can see what is likely to work best for you.

There are lots of SEO experts out there who will explain to you what a specialised role it is and will gladly take hundreds of pounds from you to ‘optimise’ your website. The truth is, any good web designer will do that for you as part of the build process. That’s not to say that these experts aren’t able to vastly improve your scores on search engines such as Google, they certainly can, but so can you and with very little effort. One of the keys to optimisation is quality link building. That is, putting inbound and outbound links to your website. You can link your site to various online directories, and you can include links within your site to other areas of your site. Some of the directories have excellent SEO ranking themselves, so by default will greatly assist in increasing your visibility.

Search engines also look for updated content. By keeping your website fresh and ensuring it is updated regularly, search engines will look more favourably on it than a static site which hasn’t changed for two years. One of the best ways to ensure your website is regularly updated is to keep a blog. A blog, or web log, is an online equivalent of a diary, which allows your visitors to keep up with what’s happening in your business, and other useful and relevant information. You can write about all sorts of things, obviously the more interesting you can make it the more people are likely to keep coming back to look for updates, or even to subscribe. Don’t be afraid to link to other peoples blogs that you’ve read that appear interesting to your target audience, providing it’s relevant, every link helps! Read other peoples blogs and comment on them where you can. You may also be able to provide a link to your site, but make sure your posts are relevant to the topic and not seen as spam.

The real key to blogging is to share it. When you’ve written your blog post details onto some of the share sites around, such as Technorati, Digg, and Stumbleupon. There are several to choose from, and it is worthwhile putting details of your blog on each of them. This will help to drive traffic to it, and ultimately to your website. Don’t forget, to build links into your blog as you are writing it.

The same can be said of articles. Writing articles about your business, and posting them on sites such as hubpages, or PRWeb will also greatly increase your scores and positioning with search engines. This is highly worthwhile and will also go some way to proving your expertise on your subject. Again, once you have submitted your article, share it. Utilise the sharing sites wherever you can. It all helps with driving traffic to your site, and ultimately winning you new business. 

Another useful resource for proving your expertise and generating more traffic to your website is online forums. You need to be reasonably careful as they can become addictive! Choose your forums wisely, ensure they have relevance to business, and they enable you to put a link to your website in your signature. Some forums are against advertising, in which case it doesn’t really serve the purpose of increasing the visibility of your business.

There are several online business networking sites which combine a whole range of areas where you can raise your profile. Probably the most popular business networking sites in the UK are: Linked In, Ecademy & 4Networking. Each of these sites are optimised to help you achieve a great position with the major search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Of course, these are only as good as the effort you put in to maintain them.

Some of the options with online marketing are no brainers, others a little more obscure.

As with any method of marketing, test and measure. There really is no point spending time or money on a marketing mix that clearly isn’t working for your business. Of course, this may seem rather obvious, but take the time to question where your enquiries are coming from, and whilst you’re there, question why you were chosen, what appealed to them about you. It never hurts to ask, and the worst that can happen is they don’t answer. Everything you do for your business needs to be worthwhile. It needs to have a value attached to it, no matter how small, and the only way to see the value is to ask the right questions!

It’s amazing how much time is wasted due to insufficient filing systems. If you’re not very organised when it comes to filing, putting a system in place for your documents and records can seem like a daunting process. It needn’t be. One of the biggest problems facing businesses is the misconception that they need to keep every document, and every email.

When it comes to managing your records, and putting an efficient filing system in place, there are several things you need to consider…

Which documents do you actually need to keep? What documents would you consider to be a record of your business? Are you likely to refer back to it? Is the document accessible elsewhere? How are you going to store your documents? Have you considered what happens to your emails?

Having a good clear records management system in place will also greatly assist with ISO compliance.

There are a few tips below which will help you with organising your systems:

Think of everything through the READ / ACTION / DELETE cycle Do you really need to keep it?

Introduce naming conventions to all your documents and stick to them. This will make  them easier to find in future.

Make sure you incorporate version control into corporate policies and procedures. You are then able to make sure you are always looking at the most recent document.

Name your emails to stand out! If you ensure all emails are titled with the area of business to which they refer, and whether there is an action to complete, this will improve efficiency immensely.

Think about who you are sending your email to. Nowadays our in boxes fill up with so many emails and more than half of them are irrelevant to us.

Where possible, try to stick to paperless working, and scan paper items. By keeping your documents online, you are only dealing with one system which is easily backed up and requires less storage space!

A lot of people have suspension file holders in drawer units in their desks, and they use them for a myriad of different things, but right now I’m going to give you an idea of how to use them to organise your time more effectively by setting up daily & monthly rotating files. It’s a simple idea but it works well, and you can use this same philosphy on emails too.

• Take 12 suspension files, label them January through to December, and place a document wallet into each, for your monthly file.
• Take a further 31 suspension files and label them 1-31, for your daily file

Everytime you come across something that doesn’t need actioning just yet, you place it in the appropriate monthly file. At the beginning of every month you empty the current monthly file into the daily files based on when they need actioning. Give yourself a few days breather by placing each item in a date a few extra days ahead of when it’s due. The monthly folder can now go to the back of the section.

Get in the habit of checking your daily file first thing every day by setting yourself an email reminder, or putting a warning tape over the PC on button until it becomes a habit! You will likely find you check it several times throughout the week, and on going this system should enable you to become more disciplined with paperwork too. Getting into the habit of using the RAD system; Read, Action & Delete for all paperwork will also help declutter your desk.

Working with a clear desk helps you concentrate.

This process can be used to aid invoicing and bill paying too. By writing out your payment cheque, placing it in an envelope and putting it in the day file three days before it’s due to be paid, then posting it on that date means it will get there on time, but the cash is in your account until the invoice or bill to be paid.  

Just think how lovely it will be to always be able to find that document when you need it!