Getting more done with less stress, effort and frustration is what many business owners wish for.

At a recent presentation, Steve Hoare (Management by Reflection), explained why, if we want to grow a business, have a home life and enjoy what we do with the minimum of stress, it is important to spend our time doing the things we are good and learn to appreciate the contributions made by people who have different strengths to us.

To illustrate the point, members of the group were asked to put themselves into one of three groups that they most identified with while acknowledging that there may be some crossover.

The Blue Group identified most with the words:

Thinking, creative, problem solving, strategic, discerning, self starting, single minded.

The Yellow Group with:

Inclusive, mature, communicator, diplomatic, co-operative, enthusiastic

The Red Group with:

Challenging, dynamic, action, perfectionist, reliable, efficient, conscientious

Each group was given the same task and assigned an observer.

The idea was to show what happens when people with the same strengths work on a task, compared to when people with a whole range of strengths work together.

The result is that people adapt to fill the gaps but usually feel uncomfortable in these roles. This is OK for a short while (our experiment only lasted for ten minutes) but the longer it continues, the more the cracks begin to show.

The ensuing discussion focused on the importance of not seeing the absence of a particular type of behaviour as a weakness but on playing to people’s strengths.

It is equally important not to let the ‘weakness’ become a crutch or an excuse, e.g. “What do you expect? I’m this type of person not that type.”

In terms of identifying the people most likely to produce the best results we often look for skills first followed by personality but profiling the behaviours needed to complement a team can often improve the way everyone works and reduce the stress, frustration and effort while getting much more done in less time.

There is a huge amount of research that shows that we are really poor judges of others and relying on ‘gut instinct’ is the worst possible way to select people to work with.

When employing people, Steve recommends the Belbin Team Role profiling tool be used along with a suite of other tools for assessing personality and aptitude. Many tools on the market have no scientific validity so it is best to check this out and use an accredited practitioner to analyse the results.

Any double about the value / cost ratio will be quickly dispelled by a calculation of what it costs to make the wrong decision!

This post was written by Mike Johansson in Social Media Today. You can sign up to this useful blog and read the original post here: http://socialmediatoday.com/

Here are Mike’s useful tips for getting a good start on using Twitter for Business:

1. Make your profile public: You want to connect with people so keep your account open.

2. Choose a Twitter name that is your entire name or at least your first name and last initial or a variation of your name. Be sure your real name is somewhere on your public profile.

3. Fill in your location with your real location: This will connect you with others in your area with whom you can network in real life.

4. Work on your bio so that it says something about your professional activities and aspirations but also displays a little of your personality. You’ve got 160 characters – choose them wisely.

5. Choose an avatar photo that is more face than anything else: Avoid the temptation to try to be too cute. Your genuine face shot is part of who you are.

6. Choose your link URL wisely: If you have a website or blog link to that or to you Linkedin or Facebook Business Page.

7. Start following others slowly: Find relevant people in your business or with related interests and follow just a very few at a time. There is no science to this but try not to follow lots more people than those who follow you.

8. Don’t just follow anyone: Following people just because they follow you is not a requirement in Twitter. Following back should be reserved for people you are genuinely interested in learning from and about.

9. Pay attention to others’ tweets: You will learn a lot by just “listening.” When the time is right (you see something you want to comment on or you want to thank someone for sharing something send them an “@” message. These tweets are the beginnings of real conversations with people who may one day become part of your professional network.

10. Retweet judiciously: When you read something that really means something to you or you think some of your followers might appreciate retweet (RT) it. If there is room add a comment to explain why you like it. (My addition – you can’t add comments if you RT from from the twitter webpage).

My additional tip: Start using Hootsuite or Tweetdeck asap as they make using Twitter much easier.

Have a comment? We’d love to hear them below:

This is aimed at beginners who would like to blog for business

What is a Blog?

A blog (from web log) is a web page that contains short articles, known as posts, on a variety of subjects. The most recent one appears at the top of the list. Each post has its own unique url that you get by clicking on the title of the post so you can send links to specific posts.

The blogger can set up categories that each post can be linked to, e.g. events, workshops, mentoring, so that a reader can quickly see all the posts in one category.  Blogs in Plain English is a great little video that explains what a blog is.

Why Blog?

Work out what you want your blog to do for your business. Make it part of your marketing strategy and assess its effect.

These are some of the reasons to blog for business

• attract potential clients
• show your expertise
• reveal the personality behind you business
• comment on events you’ve experienced
• publish articles you’ve written
• form the content of newsletters
• discuss industry practice
• initiate discussions
• get good SEO ranking
• drive traffic to your website

Blogging Platforms.

There are over 40 blogging platforms to choose from. The most popular for business are Bloggerand WordPress.

These are the main options to choose from:

1. Free themes (templates) and free hosting are supplied by both Blogger.com and WordPress.comand are the simplest way to get started. However, your blog title will contain the words Blogspot or WordPress rather than a unique domain name so assess if this is the right impression for your business. If you are expecting a lot of traffic these options won’t support it.

2. Free themes and separate (paid for) hosting gives the opportunity for a unique domain name e.g. http://www.annhawkins.com At WordPress.org (different to WordPress.com) there are thousands of free themes to choose from.

3. Paid for themes and paid for hosting give extra functions and flexibility for serious bloggers.

4. Customised themes and flexible hosting packages offer the most flexibility and create a business like appearance with art work matched to your branding, several mail boxes, email addresses and high band width for high volumes of traffic. They also offer ongoing support and training. See Ian McKendrick’s http://killerseosuperblogs.com/ for these packages.

5. Posterous.com is the simplest, non-technical option. You simply email your content and it appears on your blog. I use this for fun .. see http://therealannhawkins.posterous.com

What to write about?

There are only three rules here: be entertaining, useful or interesting.

Having strong opinions and creating a little controversy to generate debate is no bad thing either!

Know your target readers and write for them.

Subjects:

How to …..
Top ten tips to …..
Industry trends
Trade shows/conferences
Help sheets
Competitions / surveys
Profiles of industry leaders / customers / employees
Your response to current events that affect your readers

If you don’t like writing, create a video blog. A flipcam from Amazon costs about £130 and comes with all the connections to plug straight into your computer. Sound and pictures are excellent quality.

You can embed video into your blog or website or create your own YouTube Channel to which people can subscribe. Add keywords to the descriptions and it will rank higher than almost any other content onGoogle.

How to get readers.

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are just some of the ways to direct people to your blog. However they each attract a different type of person so you need to work out which is the best channel for YOUR business. You also need to establish relationships with people before they’ll take any interest in your blog and use the same entertain, inform or be interesting rules. Popping in once a week with “New blog update” and a link will have the opposite effect to the one you need to create.

When you’ve got readers, keep them. Invite them to sign up for future updates and you’ll build a mailing list of interested people.

Invite Comments. At the end of each post ask a question and invite comments. Back links from other people’s websites are great for SEO.

Invite Guest Bloggers and offer to be a guest blogger to attract new readers.

SEO Overview.

If your website has a good Google ranking there is no need to host your blog on your website. If it is a new site, adding a blog will help it to get ranked more quickly. Having a blog and website with different urls will give you twice as many chances to get in the top SEO rankings.
WordPress.org blogs can have a “plug- in” (a parcel of code that customizes your blog) called “All in one SEO pack” that enables many SEO friendly features.
Other SEO tricks are to use keywords in the post title and the text, use Paragraph headings rather than a large font and use alternative text for pictures.

What were your experiences as a blogging beginner?

How would you advise other people to get started? Share your comments below.

Simon Scott's Burning Desire

The first lesson in Napoleon Hill’s 13 proven steps to riches is that  Desire is the starting point of all achievement. He also said this:

You must have a definite major purpose – do you want money, fame, power, contentment, personality, peace of mind, happiness or something else?

You must know what you want, what you will give to get it and a definite plan and time by which you will get it.

All earned riches have their beginning in an idea.

Opportunity often comes in a different form to the one we might have been expecting.

When one is truly ready for a thing it puts in an appearance.

Disappointments and difficulties do not turn aside true desire.

The Maker of Millionaires, Napoleon Hill said:

“Neglecting to broaden their view has kept some
people doing one thing all their lives.”

Nothing wrong with that if the one thing you’re   
doing is what you are passionate about,  fills you
with deep satisfaction, a sense of achievement
and, if you need it, gives you a great income.

If  its not – why are you still doing it? Can you answer this question?

What do you want most?

Is it Money, Fame, Power, Contentment, Personality, Peace of Mind or Happiness?