Dawn Brewer

Did you set any 2010 goals? How are you doing with them?

It’s the end of January already and this month has galloped by for me. I set myself some goals for the year – which meant I also worked out some January goals to get me along the way – and I’m glad to say that last night I achieved one of my most important ones. I now have 50 Suite101 articles live – made me smile anyway

 

There’s been an awful lot written about goal setting and goal achievement - and a fair amount of what’s written has been pretty awful too I think. If only it was as easy as making sure that goals are SMART, writing them down and then waiting for it to happen. The key to goal achievement is in the action that we take – and making sure it’s the right action. This quote from Benjamin Franklin sums it up for me:

 

 

We need to be sure we’re working on the right things for us.

 

If you’d like some help or a refresher on goal setting, then you might want to sign up for this FREE email course on Goal Achievement.

 

I’d love to know if you achieved your January goals – or what your February goals are – or what you think of goal setting and goal achievement. Leave me a comment and let me know…

I’ve written an article about the three Es of management:

• Effectiveness
• Efficiency 
• Economy

Different organisations will all have different mixes of the three, but an understanding of what the model means allows performance to be measured and improved.

 

What I’d really like to know is whether this article makes the difference between Effectiveness, Efficiency and Economy clear?

I’ve just completed an article on The Project Management Triangleand whilst I was writing it it struck me how well the triangle explains the difficulties faced by small business.

 

Understanding and managing constraints is an important activity for all businesses, so having a model that identifies three common constraints can help us. 

 

The project management triangle identifies three constraints:

• time
• cost
• scope

The idea is that if you change one then you’ll affect the others too, for example, increasing the time available will affect cost and allow scope to grow – and isn’t that just like running a business or implementing any change in a business. We only have so much time and budget available and we’re constantly trying to deliver as much as possible (the scope) within that.

 

If we want to deliver more, then we have to find more time and/or more budget – by employing someone or asking more suppliers to help us or taking out a loan.

 

So, the only way to grow is to improve capacity at one of the constraints. What do you think?

I was a a little surprised today, talking to a couple of business colleagues, at their lack of understanding about why to add a comment to a blog post – and how to do it too.

 

I’ve just written a short article explaining how to add a comment to a blog post. I’ve also given a few reasons why I think it’s worth taking  the time to do it – especially if you’re a small business and want more visitors to your own blog or website.

 

Adding a comment doesn’t take very long and helps build relationships and connections – always a good thing on the web. So, please, take the time now to let me know what you think of my articles or add a comment below.

Last month (December 2009) I gave a short talk to TWBC Horsham about websites,  specifically 5 Tips to Avoid a Woeful Website and I promised to write an article about it, summing up my talk.

 

Well – I am a bit wordy! – and that article has turned into a series. The first How Can Small Business Optimize Websites? is finished and there are more on the way… who knows maybe when they’re all finished and I’ve had some feedback I could turn them into a short ebook – now there’s an interesting thought!

 

The main point I make in this first article is to make sure that you know the purpose of your website and the purpose of each page on your site too. That will help keep the focus.

 

Imagine you have a shop in a huge shopping mall… or you have a website on the Internet… some visitors will know exactly what they’ve come in for and want to complete their business as fast as possible – imagine ‘popping into Boots’ and not being able to find what you’re looking for? SuperDrug here I come! Other visitors will be happy to browse – but even those people browsing will need some directions especially if your website has lots of pages – ever consulted a store directory in a department store (or been irritated when you couldn’t find one?). Thinking about your visitors and their journey through your website will help you design the best website for you and your business, by putting your visitors first… and that comes down to defining the purpose.

 

Three things I find woeful about websites:

• Website that take too long to load – Yes I have got broadband, but I’m impatient!
• Websites that have spelling mistakes and bad grammar – well, I like words you see – and as a consumer, I’m hard to please
• The ‘it must be there somewhere’ websites where it’s just very difficult to find out what I want to know. Thank goodness for online forums and blogs and all the experts who are better at giving me the information I need than the actual companies – this seems to apply especially to big technical companies, but also applies to small business too (WOEFUL!)

 

The rest of the series on avoiding woeful websites is ‘in production’. What would you like to see added? Tell me below.

I’ve just written an article explaining the DAGMAR Advertising Model.

 

I can’t be the only person who regularly hears “advertising doesn’t work” or “advertising is really expensive – it’s only for big companies” and I always wonder just how much planning has gone into previous advertising campaigns. It’s more likely that a sales agent for a newspaper or magazine has offered advertising space and the offer was taken up without planning how to make the most of it – and very importantly, without thinking about how to measure the effectiveness of the advert.

 

DAGMAR helps us understand what we need to do to get the best from advertising (at a business level not at a creative level).

 

Do tell me what you think about the DAGMAR Advertising Model?   and do comment below and tell me what other articles you’d like to read…

Just written an article explaining the AIDA Marketing Model.

 

AIDA is

• Attention
• Interest
• Desire 
• Action

- and remembering AIDA when planning an email marketing campaign could improve the likelihood of emails being opened and read by customers.

 

The element I see missing most often when working with small business, usually in their email marketing and autoresponder campaigns, is the A – Action. Always include a call to action in marketing materials to help improve response rates.

 

Do tell me what you think of my article on AIDA - leave a comment below.

Choosing the right software can allow small businesses to compete with bigger businesses. I’ve written a number of articles on software and business recently, including one on Essential Software for Small Business, but personally, I always emphasis the communication software. Communicating with customers and potential customers is vital for all business and we’re communicating every time we write, speak or gesture.

 

That’s why I set up my business, to help people communicate with their customers and potential customers. People buy from people especially when we’re selling services, so being able to build a relationship with all our customers – without having to spend lots of money and without having to spend hours and hours doing it – can mean the difference between success and failure.

 

I take your ideas and turn them into words that can used to communicate your message and then we exploit the software to deliver the message in the best way – whether that’s websites, autoresponders, newsletters or blog posts. 

 

If you’d like to know more about how you can exploit communication software to get the right message across to your customers and potential customers, then sign up for my free newsletter (the sign-up box is on the right).

 

… and do tell me what you think of the Essential Software for Small Business article.

If you like books and reading as much as I do, then you’ll probably have a view on digital and electronic books – and e-book readers. I’ve just written the first in a series of articles which will explore the technology - and it really is fascinating! This Reading Technology article gives a brief introduction to book scanning and Google’s library project, as well as online databases of book details and e-book readers.

 

I think there’s massive change going to happen as the technology is developing quickly and it won’t be long before the book world is embroiled in the same issues as the music world – online databases and free downloads .

 

My plan is to write about the software available to catalogue and organise your books at home (or work) next and then move on to e-book readers. The Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle to start with. If you’re interested too, then do feel free to suggest an article topic and I’ll see what I can do.

 

 

If you need to structure a document that has become a pile of paper with sticky notes to denote sections, then you might be interested in one of my articles on how to structure Microsoft Word Documents.

I regularly receive assignments from students (yes that’s right I’m a lecturer with the Open University too) and I always find some students don’t know how to structure a document in a word processor – so, I wrote an article about structuring using headers, footers, headings and sections.

It’s the combination of sections, headings and the outline view that allow documents to be restructured easily and using them right from the start really does make all the difference.

Using these features of any Word Processing package also helps documents look professional – it really doesn’t give the right impression when someone makes a small change and all the page footers are no longer shown at the foot of the page.

As always, feel free to ask me questions…