From the Desk of Janet Barclay

When I was in Nova Scotia in September, I picked up a magazine called Progressive Choices - Atlantic Women and Business. For the most part, it consists of profiles of various businesswomen, including their "strategies for success."

I was quite pleased to see that many of the women featured in the Fall/Winter 2007 issue mentioned the importance of organization and/or productivity. Here’s some of what they had to say:

Be organized. Chaos just adds to the stress. Learn to manage paper well. - Wendy Scammell, Creature Care

Work less, play more. - Faith Drinnan, The Oyster Group (only possible if you have good time management skills)

Clearing your inbox doesn’t mean you are getting things done. - Diane Craig, Corporate Class Inc.

Be flexible in your planning to allow you to follow your energy level rather than submitting to a rigid plan. - George Salamandre, Les Mains rouges

When faced with a tedious or challenging task, give yourself one hour or less to finish the wretched thing. - George Salamandre, Les Mains rouges

Always prioritize your tasks. It keeps you focused. - Leah Banks

Don’t sweat the small stuff… don’t try to be perfect. - Catherine Elliot

Stay focused and work efficient hours. - Ann Murray, Malpeque Bay Kayak Tour Ltd.

All in all, Progressive Choices is a nice little magazine, with a very reasonable price of $3.95 per issue. According to their website, there is a national edition as well as three regional editions, including one for Western Canada and one for Central Canada, in addition to the Atlantic edition. I will have to look for it on my local newstand!

This past week I had the pleasure of participating in A Brand New You, a global telesummit on personal branding. I apologize for not posting any information about this conference, because it was excellent, and free of charge, thanks to the generosity of the Conference Calls Unlimited and the speakers, however, recordings of the 24 calls will be available from the website soon (also at no charge).

One of the sessions which I attended was How to Write a Great Business Blog with Debbie Weil.

I was pleased to learn that there are things I’m doing effectively:

• post personal news on occasion
• avoid politics
• post at least once a week
• use your name so your blog will come up first if someone Googles your name (at the moment, one item comes up before my blog, which is not about me, but my blog is second, and there’s only one other item on the first page that is not about me)
• publish an ezine as well as a blog to reach different audience

I also learned some things that I can work on (which is good, because otherwise it wouldn’t have been a good use of my time):

• "package" what I write, i.e. top ten lists, 7 tips on a topic, etc. with a synopsis at the top - creating a well defined resource that other bloggers will link to
• include at least one link in every post
• use specific and colourful titles that will attract both readers and search engine traffic
• occasionally email the link to an entry to someone and ask them to post a comment
• clearly post a comments policy

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, I encourage you to visit A Brand New You and listen to the podcast once it is available.

Many small businesses rely on email as a cost-effective means of marketing their products or services. This time of year, even those who don’t have a regular electronic newsletter often send out marketing emails to their contact list to let them know about their special holiday promotions. However, if it’s not done properly, your carefully crafted message may get caught in your recipient’s spam filter.

To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, take the time to download and read The Ultimate HTML Guide. For only $7.00, you can learn valuable strategies for making sure your emails are delivered, personalizing your messages, and maximizing your response rates. 

I recently received the following email:

Subject: Virtual secretarial assistantance

Vast secretarial experience.

Please contact me if you would like to outsource work.

Thank you
(Name)
(Phone number)
(Email address)

I don’t know whether I was more put off by the obvious typo in the subject line, or by the fact that the person didn’t indicate WHY I should contact them ("vast secretarial experience" just doesn’t cut it) or what TYPE of work I might consider outsourcing to them.

Sometimes I write back with questions or even suggestions on how to find people to partner with, but in this case, I didn’t think it even merited a response.