Small Business Networking Group Blog

Social Media and Reputation Management

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 06:50:00 GMT

Last Friday at the Tuggerah SBNG meeting we had the pleasure of Elizabeth Todd (www.incometriggerconsulting.com, and Patron for Gosford) as our guest speaker.

Elizabeth touched on a number of issues in the Social Media and Reputation Management areas.As she says' it is no longer a question of whether or not you use Social Media - no business has a choice any more - the real question is how well you do it!"

In fact as Elizabeth pointed out - Social media is today's word of mouth and no news is NOT good news and where bad news can go viral in the blink of an eye.

One of the best tips was in order to use Social media properly we should start by sitting down and writing a letter to our ideal customer introducing ourselves. From there we'll have a much easier time of it in terms of sounding authentic on-line.

We got to hear first hand how a poor approach to reputation management halved the value of a USA based restaurant franchise, how to check your own business out on Google places, what to do if you get a bad review (hint decide if it is genuine - if so acknowledge the error and fix it - or not. If not call up some of your good customers and ask them to post some positive reviews so the poor one get pushed down the page...)

We further learnt about using Face Book and posts more effectively and generally all learned a lot from Elizabeth and her expertise in this important area. In terms of posts - 80% should be relevant content to your target audience and 20% or less about selling your products or services. If at all possible try to keep the conversation 70% your own content, 10% relevant content from elsewhere and 20% for selling!

Lastly we were told to think seriously about including a Social media policy in to our business' overall policies and procedures.

In the end it was all too short and a return engagement will be needed!!

The Art of the Pitch

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 03:02:00 GMT

We welcomed three new guests, Stephanie, Theo and Trinity, at last Friday’s breakfast meeting of our Gosford chapter. It’s always nice to greet new faces and an increase in the diversity of business types adds value for all our members. It really proves the importance of face-to-face networking and the benefit of support and business referrals that it can bring to all of us.

The format of the meeting took a bit of a twist. Instead of starting with the round table introductions of our business Geoff Hetherington, our patron for Tuggerah, kicked off with a workshop on “The Art of the Pitch”. As proof that we all learned something of value, we put into practise what we’d heard at the end of the workshop.

Geoff is a very experienced business adviser and his approach to the subject was enlightening. The first point noted was that to attract new business you need a pitch that resonates with and captivates your audience. Unfortunately most people have a poor pitch and they have only one where they need at least two. The first one should be a short Social pitch and the second one is your full Elevator pitch.

Why is it called an elevator pitch? Imagine that you have an opportunity to introduce an idea to a really important business prospect who you run into as you step into an elevator. Well, you only have time to make that all important pitch between floors. So lesson number one; keep it short, to the point and interesting enough for your prospect to want to hear more about it.

So how do you construct this short Social pitch? Here is Geoff’s formula:

You know how (niche) _______________________

are often (problem) __________________________

Well, I run a company that (solution_____________

Fill in the blanks with at least two versions of you pitch.

A full elevator pitch needs more detail including a description of your expertise and proof of your results. Under Geoff’s guidance we all prepared and presented our versions and many of our members present at the meeting were pleasantly surprised about the ideas that they picked up. It’s too much detail to go into in a short blog post like this but if you missed the meeting or would like to follow up in more detail on the “The Art of the Pitch” you will find Geoff’s contact details on his website www.dancingblindman.com

The next meeting of the Gosford chapter will be on Friday May 10, 2013. Our presenter wil be Sean McNally of Focus Education. It promises to be another informative get together. Why not book your seat Here Now

Taxation and Your Business

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:41:00 GMT

The day of our last meeting at Umina on the 5^th of April was cold and wet but that did not deter our members. We also welcomed 2 visitors who indicated they will be joining our SBNG. A warm welcome to Jennifer and Tony. Certainly the promised presentation by Grant Pavett on the subject of Taxation and Your Business would have been a draw card for members and visitors alike as the end of the financial year is not too far away.

After a lighthearted round of “30 seconds on your business”, Grant turned what could be a boring topic of tax advice, into a very informative talk that all attendees could take benefit from. Grant heads up the CFS Accounting Team as Principal, has been a practicing Accountant for over 23 years and hence is well qualified to lead a discussion of this nature. He will no doubt be speaking at other venues before 30th June, and we can recommend Grant’s candid comments to all members. A healthy round of questions followed and was capably handled by Grant.

The most important point to note from this presentation is that we, as business owners, should engage with our Accountant well before 30th June. Once that day has passed, you will have to wait until the end of the next financial year to make any adjustments. This could be very detrimental to your business’ financial operating capabilities.

The next meeting at Umina will be on Friday 3rd May. We will have Troy Chapman present an interactive session on financial planning which will be a great follow on from Grant’s presentation and should not be missed. Mark your calendar now!

Is Your Message Clear?

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 03:34:00 GMT

The SBNG breakfast meeting at Erina last Friday welcomed four first time visitors to our get together. It’s always good to see some new faces and we would encourage every one of our members to invite any new local business owners who could benefit from joining our networking group. If there was one thing to take home from this meeting than it was the question “Is Your Message Clear?” which we worked on through a variation of our normal 30 seconds of fame.

The presenter for the morning was Belinda Ostini of the Impact Centre which is a new community facility in Erina. Here is an overview of the information provided by Belinda.

The centre was designed and constructed in partnership with CBM Sustainability and is a multi-purpose centre that is with a strong emphasis on Environmental Sustainability. The centre was opened in October 2012 and, at stage one provides the following facilities:

A two-storey PlayCentre
24hr Gym & Wellness Centre
Cafe & Catering Service
State of the Art Event & Function Facilities
Learning & Development Services
Indoor & Outdoor Wedding Spaces
Large Warehouse activity space

The centre has facilities for meetings and events of varying sizes from small group meetings to large scale conventions. Catering is available for all business functions including formal and informal settings. For information please contact the centre directly.

Following Belinda’s presentation Martyn King, our Erina patron, introduced a different version of our members’ 30 seconds of fame. Instead of doing our own introductions we were asked to tell the person sitting next to us about our business. This person then did the intro. An interesting exercise indeed! Some messages came across very clear while at the other end of the scale, the message was completely off the mark. The lesson to be learned here is that we need to make sure that our message is really clear to our audience not just simply to ourselves. Practise makes perfect. A thank you would have to go to Martyn for introducing this variation of our elevator speech.

The next meeting at Erina will be on Friday 26^th April. Make sure you mark your calendar. See you there. You can book here right now.

A business sponsorship win/win opportunity.

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 05:15:00 GMT

The Tuggerah SBNG breakfast meeting yesterday was very well attended. It was great to welcome some new faces and to see some old ones come back on the scene. The business speaker for this meeting was Chris Parker, the CEO of Surf Life Saving Central Coast (SLSCC). The most important point that came out of this presentation from a small business owner’s point of view is that by getting behind an organisation such as Surf Life Saving we can lend a helping hand where it is needed and receive promotional opportunities for our business in return. It’s a win/win business sponsorship opportunity. Here are some of the highlights from Chris’ presentation.

There are 15 clubs, 15 patrolled locations from the Lakes down to Umina and more than 9,000 members that all come under the umbrella of SLSCC. That’s quite an organisation. As a matter of fact, Surf Life Saving is the largest volunteer movement of its kind in the world. Did you know that through the dedication of this army of volunteers the Central Coast beaches are considered amongst the safest in the world? And, here is a statistic worth noting; since 1938 they have saved 34,969 lives. That’s almost 1,000 each year.

Some interesting points were noted about what SLSCC does for our youth and the community as a whole. As a registered training organisation SLSCC delivers more than rescue training. As Chris put it “We pride ourselves in building a community” and leadership education, goal setting and motivational subjects are among the programs employed to achieve this. From a small business point of view I believe that this preparation of our teenagers for getting ready for life forms the basis of building the backbone needed for business owners to succeed in the years to come.

So how do and your business get involved? You could start off by going down to the beach and meet some people. SLSCC is always looking for more volunteers but being young and able to pass the fitness test is not a pre-requisite. There’s also help needed in communications and other administration areas. Most importantly, you can help get the message out. If you have any suggestions along those lines get in touch with Chris and have a chat with him. You can call him on (02) 4353 0299 or email ceo@slscc.com.au. If you want to help but you’re not interested in volunteering then consider a business sponsorship. It’s all about the win/win promotional opportunities that I mentioned at the start of this post.

The next SBNG breakfast meeting will be at 7:45 am for an 8:00 am start on Friday 22 March at Delish in Erina. Hope to see you there. You can book here now!

Who Is Your Ideal Customer?

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

The SBNG breakfast meeting of the Gosford Chapter last Friday morning was well attended. The topic for the morning, in the form of an interactive workshop, was “Who is Your Ideal Customer”.

When we have our meetings and go around the table for our 30 seconds of fame each we introduce ourselves and our business but few of us ever make much mention of our customers. This can lead to a situation where we pass on irrelevant referrals because the prospect is not the right match for the business. Customer profiling is not a subject that is raised much in networking groups but a clear understanding of your own target audience will make it much easier to define your business objectives to other members of your networks.

Dividing into smaller groups we were asked to visualize this ideal customer.

What is their gender?

Age group?

Relationship status?

Do they have children?

What are their hobbies or other interest?

Some of these questions may seem irrelevant but when marketing your business it really is important to keep this customer profile in mind. As a starting point is was noted that 85% of all purchase decisions are made by women.

We had some great discussions around the topic in all of the groups. Not only did we dig into who our ideal customer is but what also came out very clearly, as an additional comment from a number of members, was a definition of the customer that was definitely not wanted. In one specific example, one of our members quoted his unwanted customers as people who had no clear idea of what they wanted and/or who had no marketing budget for his services. Needless to say, a clear identification of this customer profile can prevent a lot of headaches as it can help you avoid having to deal with difficult customers. In quite a few other cases this group discussion helped to put a much clearer focus on where the customer emphasis of the business should be.

At the end of the group discussions there was another 30 seconds of fame around the group where everyone give us an idea of the result of their customer profiling. In some cases where the business deals with one specific service it wasn’t necessarily easy to narrow it down while others were able to come up with some very clear profiles.

So what was the objective of this exercise? When marketing your business you can spend a lot of time and money promoting your products and services but if you address the wrong audience, or too broad an audience, you will be wasting your time and money. Do your customer profiling right and you’ll be able to provide a much better proactive customer service which is the best basis for building long term business relationships.

Do you have a clear understanding of who your ideal customer is? If not then try and work it out because it is this customer who you should address in all your marketing communications to. Share your thoughts on this topic with us in the comments box.