By Suzi Dafnis, Australian Businesswomen’s Network

If you had to get up tomorrow, or a week from now, and pitch your idea to an audience, how would you go?

James Stevens, Roses Only, Lindley Edwards, AFG Venture Group and Suzi Dafnis, Australian Businesswomen's Network

Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) recently gave four women the opportunity to pitch in front of a panel of judges (Dragons’ Den style) and an audience of about 60 other business owners.

These four entrepreneurs weren’t pitching for money, but were none-the-less expected to do their best to convey their message and provide enough information (but not too much) about what they were offering. In exchange, they got some business advice to help them improve their pitch and further their ideas.

I was on the panel, along with James Stevens of Roses Only and the delightful Lindley Edwards of AFG Venture Group.

Four courageous women took the stage:

1. Nikki Hills, founder and managing director, Mouths of Mums
2. Michelle Teague, entrepreneur looking for her next venture (Invisible ink name badges!)
3. Angela Elliss, founder and managing director, Australian Home Design Directory Group
4. Julie Ankers, founder and managing director, Statement Pieces

Overall, they all did a great job pitching their ideas.They (obviously) knew their business and were very passionate.

Some of the areas that they could have done better at were clarity of message, succinctness and being specific about what the outcome of the pitch was.

Despite the evening event being a great networking night for a bit of fun, the women did get some great advice from the panel, including these four areas below:

Four Ways to Improve Your Business Pitch

Length of Pitch. How Long Should Your Pitch Be?

Most presenters exceeded the suggested time limit. If you have an audience (whether with your bank manager, investors or a potential business client) and they have allocated a certain amount of time for a meeting – then stay within the boundaries. It shows you respect their time.

It’s easier to speak for a long time than to speak succinctly for a short time. So, practise, practise, practise.

Say what you need to say with the most punch and fewest words.

If you’re compelling, you can ask for extra time to expand, but don’t take it without checking in or you risk losing people’s focus.

A Clear Message Cuts Through

Nikki Hills, Mouths of Mums

It was not always clear what the intentions was behind the pitch each woman gave.

What do you want the audience/panel to do? be very clear in your outcome and state it.

For example:

Today I’d like to tell you enough about our 2012 plans to convince you to share our message with you clients.

or

I’m looking to raise $10,000 for marketing. Over the next 10 minutes, I’ll present our marketing plan and I’ll then ask for your input on our ideas.

Tell Your Story – Set the framework

Your personal story adds colour and life and allows us to see behind the person that is doing the pitch.

When I was a panelist on the Dragons Den TV show, we dragons signed up equally on the likability of the person as well as the message and numbers. People like to do business with those they know and trust, so let the audience know you.

Similar to the clarity of message point above, tell your story, but don’t get carried away. We don’t need to know your history and every detail – just enough to make a decision or follow a call to action.

Know your facts and study your competitors

If you’re going into a new market then learn about that market, your competitors and who your competition is. As much as we like to think sometimes that we have no competition, we always do. It just may not be obvious. If you’re bringing out a new telephone (I know – extreme example) then the iPhone is not your only competition – not is every other phone – it’s actually every other way that there is for people to connect with other people.

Also, the whole market is NOT your market. There’s usually a subset of the big group who you can effectively address. (This is your ‘addressable market’.)

When it comes to the numbers, get really crystal clear about what it will cost to implement a plan. If you’re not good with numbers then it’s difficult for investors to have confidence in you. Run the details past your accountant and, again, practise talking about them so that you’re comfortable if asked questions.

Remember, you may only have one opportunity to pitch in front of a particular person or group. Pitching is an art and a science, so look to improve your skills as a presenter, speaker and do your homework.

And, good luck.

Suzi

P.S. I recently interviewed Lindley Edwards about narrative in business storytelling. You can listen to the interview here on our website or tune in on iTunes.

About DWEN

The DWEN community is an invitation-only, global community established to bring together an influential group of female CEOs, presidents, founders and business leaders to share best practices within the unique and challenging world of running high-growth businesses.

With the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) and other related initiatives, Dell is spotlighting female entrepreneurial success and creating an atmosphere where women can connect with one another, share best practices, build business opportunities and recognise female influence in business and technology.

DWEN Annual Conference: Dehli, India

In 2012, Dell’s annual conference will be at the cultural mecca of Delhi, India from June 17-19. Attendance is by invitation-only.

To learn more join the DWEN “Women Powering Business” Linkedin Community: visit www.dell.com/dwen

Being part of the DWEN community creates unique opportunities to connect, share best practices, build business opportunities and recognise female influence in business and technology. In addition to the annual DWEN Conference, the community holds webinars, Tweetchats and face-to-face networking events throughout Australia.

By Suzi Dafnis, Australian Businesswomen’s Network

A new book titled Outwitting the Devil is the long-awaited sequel to bestselling phenomenon Think and Grow Rich.

Written by Napoleon Hill in the 1930s, the book was too controversial to release in its time. Bestselling author Sharon Lechter has recently had the daunting task of annotating the book (given to her exactly as the author had left the manuscript 80+years ago) and working to make the important messages relevant to today.

And, she’s done a stellar job. The book is timely, easy to follow and contains poignant messages.

I read Outwitting the Devil in preparation for an interview with Sharon for the Australian Businesswomen’s Networks podcast series, herBusiness.

The interview, and the book, examine the greatest obstacles we face in reaching potential goals: fear, procrastination, anger and jealousy, as tools of the Devil (which is the way the author described them).

herBusiness podcast interview

Over 30 minutes, you can listen to Sharon tell us first hand:

• How fear, worry, doubt and indecision work against us
• Why victory goes to the people who know what they want and are determined to have it
• What the author discovered in his darkest moments that he turned around to achieve great success

I really enjoyed interviewing Sharon for this podcast. Take a listen in one of two ways:

Listen to this episode on our website.

Listen to this on your MP3 player, by downloading it from iTunes.

Purchase the Book

If you’d like to get a copy of the book, you can order it from Booktopia.

I’m a bit of a podcast addict. I love to listen to them while I drive or while I’m doing things around the house. It’s a great way to learn on the go.

Here’s a look at the library of podcasts we’ve created for you over the last year. Topics include small business, marketing, social media, interviews with authors. It’s all here on our website.

By Suzi Dafnis, Australian Businesswomen’s Network

When was the last time you let someone know how much you appreciated what they did? When doing business with other businesses, it’s often easier to complain about what you’re not happy with then to give credit. At the Australian Businesswomen’s Network, we are extremely fortunate to have customers who tell us what we’re doing well.

You may have heard about Michael Stelzner’s book Launch — How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition. We’ve been recommending the book for about two months and just recently had the author on the popular BOOKED for Lunch webinar series. 600 people registered to listen in while we interviewed Michael about the rich nuggets of information in his book.

The book is terrific (in fact our whole advisory board is currently reading it) and, I feel, essential reading for business owners.

Here are some of their comments about the webinar, which you’ll find in our online store. It’s still available free (for a few weeks before it goes behind the premium-members-only wall).

So, I encourage you to take a listen.

More comments about Relevance

• The presentation mostly reinforced a lot of what I already practice/believe as a marketer. All good content.
• Fantastic webinar, so much relevant information
• Simplicity, good relevant information, direct and more importantly…..showing how a
  business can truly benefit by being generous.
• Old ideas but represented in a new way with new relevance

More comments about the speaker – Michael Stelzner

• Enjoyed Everything. So many takeaways from Mike I don’t know where to begin!
• Michael’s content was very valuable, the webinar was well facilitated, technology worked well.
• Michael using such creative and visual language to put his excellent points across.We definitely
  try to use the techniques he has outlined so it was a great way to re-energise us at the tail
  end of the year when we are all looking forward to a holiday.
• Great clear, concise ad generous information offered.
• Michael is very generous with his knowledge, great tips about focusing on content &
  customers rather than $$
• Useful and insightful tips shared by Mike.

More comments about the information

• ‘De-mything’ the sell, sell, sell mentality that is being FORCED down your throat when you’re looking at going online. THANK YOU. That is inspiring!
• Great content, awesome interview style.
• New ideas about how to go about launches, particularly around marketing and the ‘not sell’ idea
• Clear to listen to; interesting content

Thanks to everyone that listened in. We hope you’ll join us for the 2012 series of BOOKED for Lunch when it kicks off in February.

Your website is just like a billboard. For many businesses, especially online businesses that don’t publicly trade from a physical location, your website IS the billboard that passing traffic sees.

But, does your business looking like it’s out of date when I look at your website? In this post I’ve included five tell-tale signs that you may have some updating to do to bring your website into the now.

But don’t worry. The big guys get it wrong too!

The Seymour Centre is a local theatre/performance Centre connected to the University of Sydney. I pass the theatre when walking my dog in Victoria Park in the inner city of Sydney.

The Seymour Centre, Sydney

In January, along with a number of Sydney venues, The Seymour Centre will host a number and local international acts as part of the Sydney Festival, a big summer lineup of music, theatre, art, dance.

Situated on a prominent corner near Sydney University thousands (probably tens of thousands) of cars pass The Seymour Centre each day.

As at late December the main billboard which can be seen from multiple directions as you approach the centre was still promoting acts that had passed in September. OOPS!

What a missed opportunity to highlight all the great shows they have coming up (a number of which I’ve booked to attend).

For many of us our website is our biggest billboard, with thousands (if we’re lucky) of people passing by each day.

Five Signs That Your Website Makes Your Business Look Out Of Date

1. The last post on your blog or ‘updates’ section of your site is more than three weeks old
2. The copyright notices on your website are not current
3. Your About Us page doesn’t reflect your current business description, products and services
4. The team photo on your Meet the Team page includes team members that have long left
5. Any events listed on your site lapsed long ago

Updating these items is easy and a good ‘new-year’ list of things to take care of. I know we’re taking care of these very things next week when the office reopens.

Are their other areas we should add to this list? Let us know.

Suzi

P.S. The good news (!) is that I noticed last week that the billboard outside The Seymour Centre has been updated to promote the theatre’s January schedule.

MORE GREAT BLOG POSTS BY SUZI DAFNIS

• The business books that rocked my year, in a good way
• The three words that will shape my 2012 goals
• How to Use Social Media for Business Research

By Suzi Dafnis, Australian Businesswomen’s Network

I’ve done a lot of reading this year. I’m a bit of a business bookworm. When others are deep in novels, I’m scouring the (virtual) bookshelves for what’s new in business books.

This year, in preparation for the BOOKED for Lunch webinar series where I interview top business book authors, I had the divine pleasure of reading and enjoying what I deem some of this year’s BEST books for business.

Here are the 10 books we featured this year.  They’re not in order of preference. I recommend you add them all to your library.

You can access the recordings of the interviews in the Australian Businesswomen’s Network’s online store.

Launch: How to quickly propel your business beyond the competition – Michael Stelzner

“Any business can defy gravity, especially in this uncertain economy,” says Michael Stelzner about his new book, Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition. Launch contains a proven roadmap for any business, large or small, seeking to launch an effective growth strategy with content marketing. You can instantly download the first chapter (no registration required) at www.elevationprinciple.com.

— The ABN’s advisory board is reading this over the holidays so that we can use the great information strategically in the new year

Enchantment: Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions – Guy Kawasaki

Enchantment is Guy’s tenth book. In it, he explains how to influence what people will do while maintaining the highest standards of ethics. The book explains when and why enchantment is necessary and then the pillars of enchantment: likability, trustworthiness and a great cause. The topics are launching, overcoming resistance, making enchantment endure and using technology. There are even special chapters dedicated to enchanting your employees and your boss.

– Guy was such a charm to work with. Funny and easy going. He presented a second webinar with us ‘How to enchant with social media” which you’ll also find in our store.

Content Rules – Ann Handley and CC Chapman

Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other publishing platforms are giving everyone a “voice,” including organisations and their customers. So how do you create the bold stories, videos and blog posts that cultivate fans, arouse passion for your products or services and ignite your business? How do you attract the right audience? How do you create content that converts? What is the best way the most popular tools to get the greatest results?

– If you publish tweets, Facebook updates, a blog, a newsletter – anything, really then content can be your friend or enemy. No business today can get away with shoddy content and this book walks you through what you need to know.

Suzi Dafnis and Ann Handley

The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and more Social — Jay Baer and Amber Naslund

This book isn’t about how to “do” social media. Instead, The NOW Revolution outlines how you must retool your organisation to make real-time business work for you rather than against you. Read about seven shifts that will help you make your company faster, smarter, and more social:

• Engineer a New Bedrock
• Find Talent You Can Trust
• Organise your Armies
• Answer the New Telephone
• Emphasise Response-Ability
• Build a Fire Extinguisher
• Make a Calculator

The NOW Revolution is pushing you to adapt the way you do business, from the inside out. It impacts your organisation culturally, operationally and functionally. This book is your guide to making the changes you need and to harnessing the potential of this new communication era.

— Amber was so generous with her information and provided easy to implement tips. It’s so seldom we get women business authors that we were thrilled when she agreed to be interviewed.

Niche – James Harkin

Our cultural consumption is no longer controlled by the giants of the mainstream market. Many giants have become weak and defensive – hovering around the middle of the market and striking out wildly in search of new audiences. In Niche, James Harkin explains that no size fits all and that anyone who tries to be all things to everyone ends up as nothing to anyone.

James argues that innovation and profitability are quietly moving from the middle of the market to a series of tightly defined but globally scattered niches, bound together by the reach of the net.

— James joined us from the UK (it was about 6am local time) and we had a lot of fun on this interview.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies — Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li

Corporate executives struggle to harness the power of social technologies. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube are where customers discuss products and companies, write their own news and find their own deals, but how do you integrate these activities into your broader marketing efforts? It’s an unstoppable groundswell that affects every industry yet it’s still utterly foreign to most companies running things now.

— Josh knows this area SO well. We were delighted to have him tell us how the book was more relevant now than when the original edition was published a couple of years ago.

Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything

In Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything, Chris Brogan guides you through using Google+ for promotion, customer service, community building, referrals, collaboration and a whole lot more. You won’t just master innovative new tools like Circles and Hangouts; You’ll use them to generate more customers and more cash!

— We held this event just before the book was due to launch. Google+ hadn’t yet launched pages for businesses. Chris gave us a your of the new social network and we taught him a little about Australian music.

Predictable Success — Les McKeown

If you own, manage or work for any kind of organisation, you have one goal above all else – success. And not just occasional, elusive or temporary success.

You’re looking for:

• Success that you understand and can control
• Success you can maintain indefinitely
• Success you can replicate
• Success you can scale
• Success that isn’t dependent on you alone

In short, you’re looking for Predictable Success.

— Les’ Scottish humour went down a treat with the Australian audience. The book was recommended to us by member Alycia Edgar. It really made me think about the stage of business we are in and what to do to stay at the peak part of Les’s Predictable Success model.

We First : How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World – Simon Mainwaring

Is technology teaching us to be more human? Could the future of profit actually be purpose? A social media expert with global experience with many of the world’s biggest brands, including Nike, Toyota and Motorola, Simon Mainwaring offers a visionary new practice in which brands leverage social media to earn consumer goodwill, loyalty and profit, while creating a third pillar of sustainable social change through conscious contributions from customer purchases.

— I met Simon in the US earlier this year. A fellow Aussie living in the US he’s nailed the fact that those that will win in the future of business are those that make a contribution to more than their customers and shareholders. We can all learn from the messages in this book.

A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Crowdsourcing — Aliza Sherman

If two heads are better than one, then imagine how great 200 or 2,000 or 20,000 could be for helping you get something done. That’s the potential power of crowdsourcing – tapping into the global talent pool and using an “open source” approach to bringing in more people to participate together to reach a common goal. the book looks at all the tools you’ll need to begin crowdsourcing, how to define your goals and target different crowds, how to design the best project or campaign to share, how to organise and analyse the input you receive from the crowd to get results and how to apply the crowd’s output directly to your business

— Aliza is known as a web pioneer and social media innovator. We’ve caught up in the US the last two years and she’s very committed to supporting women to understand and make use of technology. I applaud her efforts.

Aliza Sherman (left) and Suzi Dafnis

If I’m honest, more times than not I crammed the reading into the days before the interview reading or rereading to prepare sensible questions.

The winner in the equation was me.  I’ve been the recipient of the best business education money can buy.

I trust those that listened in to the webinars also felt like they’d received a gift of education from these talented and generous authors. And, that the authors themselves derived a sense of satisfaction from having their book featured to our national community of inspiring businesswomen.

I hope you’ll take my recommendation and get a hold of these books. I also recommend you take a listen to the webinar recordings.

9,200+ people registered for the BOOKED for Lunch series during 2011. We’ll kick off the 2012 season of BOOKED for Lunch webinars in February, so join our eMail list to be notified of the next great business book we’ll be profiling.

What books rocked your year?

MORE GREAT BLOG POSTS BY SUZI DAFNIS

• How to Use Social Media for Business Research
• How to get Everything Done Before Christmas
• How Guy Kawasaki Enchanted Me

By Belinda Weaver, Copywrite Matters

The ABN Masterclasses are small-group sessions that focus on specific member issues and offer practical advice in a hands-on way. I was honoured to present the very first Masterclass in December 2011, focusing on how to use copywriting to improve the performance of business websites.

If you couldn’t log into the live Masterclass or you haven’t watched the recording, here are the best tips on making your website copywriting more effective and engaging.

Copywriting Health Check Stage 1: Your credibility

When someone lands at your website, they get an instant impression about how reputable your business is. The look and feel of your website plays a big part in that critical first impression, but the types of pages you have also communicate a lot about your credibility.

To create the right impression, your website should have:

• Pages about your products or services
• An About page introducing yourself and/or your business
• Pages that show you’ve worked with other clients (like testimonials or case studies pages)
• A reasonably detailed contact page

All of these pages work together to tell me that you are a real and credible business.

Copywriting Health Check Stage 2: Every page essentials

Every page needs: to back up your value proportion

I call this your simple truth and it is the real benefit you offer your customers (when you get past the marketing speak and industry jargon). To work out your simple truth, imagine describing your business to someone you’ve never met. In response to your fantastically detailed explanation they say, “so what?” You dig a bit deeper. They say, “so what?” When you continue this imaginary conversation, you will eventually get to the simple truth behind what you offer the world.

Every page needs: to answer “what’s in it for me?”

This is the question your website visitors are asking from the moment they arrive on your website. Rather than simply describing what your business does, remember to link your services back to the reasons your website visitor is looking for a solution. How are you making their life better?

Every page needs: a headline

Your headline is the attention grabber for your page. As prime real estate, it’s useful to focus on the key benefit you offer and your main keywords. Imagine if your visitor read nothing else on the page, what is the most important thing they need to know? Another great tip is to make your page headline specific. If your headline would make sense in any other industry, there is an opportunity to make it more specific to your business.

Every page needs: a call to action

A call to action simply instructs your website visitor to perform an action. While you might think it’s obvious that you want people to email you for more information, register for your event or download your free report – a specific call to action will improve your response rate. Make your call to action clearly visible and actionable.

Copywriting Health Check Stage 3: Language and Readability

Once you know your key marketing messages and the benefits your target audience will care about, you can look at the way you communicate those messages. How well your audience understands your message is the key to action and fancy, formal language can sometimes do you more harm than good.

Here are some tips on making your copywriting easy to read and understand:

• Imagine speaking directly to a single person and write like you speak
• Keep your paragraphs relatively short and focused on one idea
• Vary the lengths of your sentences to create a changing rhythm
• Use whitespace to some breathing room around your copy
• Break up long sections of copy with subheadings and lists

Remember, always keep your simple truth in mind and make sure your website copywriting answers the question: what’s in it for me? Oh, and don’t forget those headlines and call to actions!

You can download the live Masterclass now and see my Copywriting Health Check applied to three member sites (along with more tips for effective website copywriting).

By Nerida Gill, Admin Bandit

I’m tempted to add “New Year’s resolutions” to my list of dirty words. The phrase is just too steeped with failure — it doesn’t help, of course, that the media loves to bombard us with abysmal statistics.

Apparently 25% of us can’t even stick to a resolution for a week and 88% fall by the wayside within a year.

There’s even an industry that analyses the top reasons we fail!

Are we really that pathetic?

No.

I think we fail because no-one has taught us to make effective resolutions — our resolutions are too vague and focus on the negative, which means we either have no plan of attack or have to deprive ourselves of something we love, such as chocolate.

So I’m not going to give up making New Year’s resolutions just yet… I’m just going to make ones that are specific and optimistic. I’ve brainstormed a list of bite-sized things we can all do to boost our businesses and refresh our enthusiasm in 2012.

Best of all, they’re (mostly) free and take less than five minutes to start!

Learn and grow

Professional development is a breeze, not to mention fun and inspiring when you:

• Join an association (and later take on a role)
• Get familiar with your local library’s business section
• Hire a consultant
• Attend a workshop or conference
• Learn how to write a press release

Get organised

A few simple strategies will transform the way you work. To get more done in less time and with fewer hassles:

• Set three to five specific goals at the beginning of each week
• Write a daily to-do list, tackling the most important tasks first
• Divide your time into blocks of related activities to reduce distractions and interruptions. For example, make your phone calls or answer your emails in a single sitting
• If you catch yourself procrastinating, ask yourself, “Is this the best use of my time?”
• Set a time limit on meetings and stick to it
• Spend 10 minutes a day doing those tasks you avoid… it quickly adds up.

Develop your business relationships

Networking doesn’t have to be scary; in fact, it can be surprisingly effortless:

• Join or friend business-related Facebook pages and regularly leave comments
• Say “thank you” more often: acknowledge everyone from your team members to the speaker at a seminar
• Decide to be cheerful: smile, compliment or chat to your customers, suppliers and associates, even if they’re grumpy or difficult
• Give people something for nothing: your time, advice, free samples or even small gifts

Attract more customers

Don’t have a marketing and promotions budget? A little creativity and Internet savvy go a long way:

• Join social networks. Get on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Flickr
• Start a blog or guest post on a related blog
• Create a new email signature with all your contact details, including address, phone numbers, email, website and social networking links
• Engage with small business forums: ask questions, leave comments and share your experiences
• Invite customers, suppliers and associates to join your mailing list
• Develop partnerships with complementary businesses
• Share your expertise: run free workshops, make videos for Youtube or write an e-book to download from your website
• Run a competition or donate prizes to an event
• Start an incentive/rewards program

MORE GREAT POSTS BY NERIDA GILL

• Ho Ho Ho, A’ Christmas Networking We Go
• Entrepreneurial Qualities: Lessons from the Life of Steve Jobs
• Keeping Up With Your Brand: A Reality Lesson from the Kardashians

By Nerida Gill, Admin Bandit

    Image by Pixomar*

“’Tis the season to be jolly,” goes the famous carol and I suggest the same applies to our small business activities at this time of year.

No, I’m not suggesting we turn Christmas into a cold, commercial transaction, but I do believe the many parties over the coming weeks give us the opportunity to celebrate our strong relationships and build new ones.

I’m well aware, of course, that many people think the words “work” and “party” are an oxymoron. Or, in fact, just a plain “moron” — we’ve all witnessed those awkward moments of silence or, worse, alcohol-fuelled liberation!

However, it doesn’t have to be that way. I have some ideas to make sure the Christmas parties you go to this year are fun, full of good cheer and networking successes.

When you’re the guest

My number one tip is probably the last one you’re expecting — it’s okay to decline an invitation.

You see, it’s about quality, not quantity.

And by that I mean attending a handful of Christmas parties with a networking strategy in hand is better than blindly chasing every balloon and streamer in town.

Consider these ideas:

• Look for parties hosted or attended by compatible businesses
• Find out who else is going to a party and create a list of people you’d like to meet, especially key decision-makers
• Always talk to your host and don’t be afraid to ask for introductions
• Aim to have quality conversations with 5-7 people
• Keep the conversation light and social — your aim is to meet people and have fun, not close a sale
• Don’t limit yourself to work parties — potential contacts have social lives too!

When you’re the host

Throwing a Christmas party is a great way to say “thank you” and reinforce existing relationships, not to mention reach out to new potential contacts.

One of the hardest things about organising an event is to provide guests with incentives to attend. Willingly. You want people to a come along feeling confident and relaxed…  and I have three ways to achieve this.

First, entice them with a gift.

This could be:

• A Literal gift, such as a goodie bag, discount voucher or door prize
• A memorable location, such as a museum, chic café or charter boat
• A guest of honour, such as a personality or expert in your field
• An activity, which could be anything from a magician or string quartet to wine tasting or a cooking demonstration or even a guest lecture or workshop. Just make sure your activity doesn’t cause embarrassment or discomfort… not everyone wants to go paintballing or do karaoke!

Second, make sure your party is easy to attend…

…which means sending invites that let your guests know exactly what to expect.

Apart from the obvious, include:

• A finish time
• The purpose of your party; for example, to celebrate increasing sales by 15% over the year
• Who is attending; for example, a select group of loyal and supportive friends, customers and associates
• The names of guests of honour, MCs or entertainers
• A dress code
• What refreshments will be served; for example, a buffet dinner or coffee with sweet Christmas treats
• Any speeches or activities that will occur.

Third, create a comfortable atmosphere and make meeting new people painless.

Do this by:

• Allowing guests to bring their own guest, such as a colleague or family members
• Providing name badges with big, clear writing. Don’t just write a person’s name… add their business, association or link to give context and spark conversation
• Making something happen early… have a welcome speech or some entertainment 15 to 20 minutes into the party to create a sense of unity and open opportunities for interaction
• Having an MC to guide guests through your party
• Having people whose job is to greet guests, start conversations, introduce people and keen an eye out for anyone at a loose end
• Making sure your refreshments are top notch!

Consider an e-party

In these days of global workplaces, not to mention impossible parking, an e-party or, more formally, a virtual event is perfect if you want your Christmas party to be a learning-based event, such as a seminar, workshop or q and a.

A successful e-party has five aspects:

1. Technology: while you can buy e-conferencing software, I recommend small business owners keep it simple and use Facebook, blogs or a forum on your website
2. A compelling topic: grab interest by discussing a trend, an item currently in the news or a problem that needs solving
3. Purpose and structure: know precisely what you want to achieve and have a chair to introduce experts and guide discussion
4. Engage participants: create interest and facilitate discussion with videos, images and plenty of opportunities for questions
5. Time: give a specific timeframe, ranging from an hour to a number of months.

To give you an idea just how successful even a simple virtual event can be, my friend has been following an ongoing thread on an Australian horse forum that allows horse owners to ask a snake expert questions. Seventeen pages and 3,683 views later, the thread is still on a hot topic on the front page!

MORE GREAT POSTS BY NERIDA GILL

• Entrepreneurial Qualities: Lessons from the Life of Steve Jobs
• Keeping Up With Your Brand: A Reality Lesson from the Kardashians
• Are You Responsible? How Small Business Can Give Back

*Featured Image is by Pixomar

By Suzi Dafnis, Australian Businesswomen’s Network

Blog about your passion. For some of you, your passion will be something in your business. However, if you have a passion for something else related to your business (such as direct mail advertising or Google AdWords), then you could write about this and still promote your business.

Whatever you write about, you have to keep your business brand and message consistent. Your business blog should not be your personal blog, or your travel blog. Stick to business on your business blog. Your blog should carry forward the brand from your website and other marketing materials. At one point, we used a blog template that didn’t look like our website and we ended up changing the design so that it looks seamless when compared to our site.

Stay on brand!

If you don’t already have a website for your business, consider setting up a blog. Blog technology allows you to set up a page that looks exactly like a website, operates like a website, can integrate plug-ins for e-commerce and collect names and addresses in the database. It’s a wonderful, inexpensive way to develop a website quickly. See QuickPress for an example of a quick, easy blog platform. If I were to launch a new business today, I would start with a blog.

I’m not saying, “Build it and they will come.” They won’t come. You need to be where they are. You want to go where the eyeballs are. Visit other blogs, make comments and see who’s communicating there and using those social tools.

Blog posts should offer valuable content for your audience.

Posts should engage the audience so that they tweet about the post and link to it. Give users the option to comment, too. One of my posts received 79 comments, which increased traffic to the post and engaged the community. Make sure you also respond to comments too; let your followers know that you are listening.

You can also use polls and contests and ask questions to engage the community. Give your audience a voice. We’ve actually used polls on our blog to help create new products and services by asking women what they care about, what bugs them and what would help them in their businesses.

You should track the traffic to your blog.

Google Analytics works well with most blogging platforms. When we sit down on Wednesday mornings for our staff meeting, the ABN team looks at the number of visitors to our blog, the number of comments, the number of new subscriptions and which posts are most popular. If you make a habit of blogging at least a couple of times a week and reviewing the traffic data, you’ll begin to realise which types of posts draw the most traffic.

If you’re not a great writer…

Consider recording YouTube videos and posting them on your blog. You can also record and post podcasts. But when you post videos, photos and podcasts, be sure to include at least a paragraph that contains keywords for search engine optimisation.

And then there are times when it may be better to avoid blogging. Don’t blog if you don’t have anything to say. If your posts are not engaging and useful, then you will probably lose followers. Remember: “No One Cares What You Had for Lunch!” This is also the name of an online resource with suggested blog topics.

Other helpful resources for blogging include Blogging for Dummies, problogger.net and anything by Seth Godin.

MORE GREAT BLOG POSTS BY SUZI DAFNIS

• How Guy Kawasaki Enchanted Me
• Make Telephone Interviews Work: Tips for Preparing and Conducting Virtual Interviews
• Boardroom to Bedroom – Three cornerstones for success

Member Alycia Edgar is making the news with her business program Bizfficiency.

Systems can be the making of a small business, but without them everything falters. When it comes to driving their businesses, some owners can be the roadblocks.

As a small business owner and innovator, Alycia Edgar knows this situation very well, but she also found the solution and created the Bizfficiency program to help others achieve complete business systemisation.

The five-week Bizfficiency – Discover the Business of Business teleseminar series reveals the secrets behind business efficiency, based on techniques tried and tested by Alycia herself.

“I run my business using a number of different systems that all work together to drive efficiency and productivity, making me a much better – and happier – business owner. I have reached systems nirvana and want to share my tips with others,” Alycia, who created the award-winning small business accounting system Bookzkeeper, explained.

Bizfficiency graduate Kelly Exeter from Swish Design said she now understood the need for firm systems in business after completing the program last year.

“Creating these systems allowed me to outsource all the jobs I hated the most and freed me up to spend more time doing what I love, and that is being creative. Being creative makes for happy days,” Kelly said.

“In fact, I have applied many of the principles I learned from Alycia to my everyday life and am now using that increased productivity to free up time to spend on myself and with my family, rather than to just ‘do more stuff’. This has given me a better quality of life, and if I am honest, has made me a nicer person!” she added.

Using her own experiences as a small business owner who struggled to keep all the balls in the air before systemising with great results, Alycia launched Bizfficiency with a free call on 2 November 2011.

The series starts on 8 November and covers a different aspect of system implementation every week:

• Weeks One and Two – Personal Productivity System
• Weeks Three and Four – Marketing Systems and Client Systems
• Week Five – Financial Systems, Strategy and Measurement Systems

“Small business owners who commit to systemising their operations now will start 2012 ready to thrive, because they understand the link between their business goals and financial numbers and are armed with productivity tools to drive that success,” Alycia added.

The Bizfficiency program includes five weekly teleseminars, checklists and templates for $397.

For more information about Bizfficiency visit www.bizfficiency.com.

To find our more about Alycia Edgar go to www.bookzkeeper.com.au and www.numbersarelife.com.

Alycia Edgar is one of our herBusiness bloggers.

Enjoy these great posts written by Alycia:

• This year is nearly over… but not yet
• Take a Chance
• Stop! Let me off this train, this wasn’t the ticket I bought!
• I don’t know enough.
• What can you achieve in 90 days?
• Can you care too much about clients?