Do we think about ourselves often enough?

Today, I was very nearly writing this blog from a hospital bed. You see, after not sleeping brilliantly last night after the clocks had gone forward and having to get up at 6am (well my clocks said it was 6am; my body definitely said it was 5am), I came the closest I'd ever come to falling asleep on the Motorway.

OK, we all have those moments I'm sure - but this time it was different and certainly bad enough to make me want to write a blog entry about it. You see, as small business owners, we're very good at thinking about other people, rushing to and fro from meetings, skipping lunch and so on.

But what about ourselves? We'll be no good to anyone if we end up in hospital (or worse) due to rushing and trying to catch our tails the whole time.

Lesson learnt for me. What will make you stop and consider yourself more often?

Week 3...

Ah...like a lot of Twitter users I suspect, I'm finding it harder and harder to keep up with posting on there. I've figured out that I can login using my blackberry, but still when I think about it, I'm usually driving and then by the time I've stopped, that thought has gone out of my head.

Going to have to get more disciplined.

And by the way, how do you build followers on Twitter? I've kindof assumed that half the battle is to keep posting info about what you're doing, but I seem to be stuck at the moment with building more followers. I've tried this morning with following people back - any help would be appreciated though...

Twitter update

Still enjoying posting on Twitter - it was harder to find time to post on there last week. I only managed one post a day on average and nothing on Friday. I will try for two posts a day this week, introducing my tip of the day too.

I was also frustrated by not being able to link Twitter to Facebook. I tried three times, but there was obviously a fault or something going on and I wasn't able to do it. How annoying!

My first week on Twitter

So, it's now been a week on Twitter and to be honest I'm quite surprised by how much I've enjoyed it. I thought one of the things I'd find difficult would be to come up with things to say, but in hindsight, that's not been a problem. Well, not yet anyway.

The other thing that's not been a problem was to go on there and update it - the first couple of days I was making myself do this anyway and then I started to get notifications from people that they were following me, which obviously spurred me on to write another post.

I'm a little worried that all my posts so far seem to be business orientated, but having said that that's what I'm doing everyday anyway so they are actually personal comments too. The 140 character limit is deceptive as well - there have been a few times this week where I've had to rewrite something to make it fit!

So, onto week 2...

Why you should build your reputation

Reputation in business is everything. It helps you build trust and credibility with your customers and contacts; it can help persuade someone to buy from you if they’re not sure and it’s also far easier to raise your prices if people perceive you as an expert.

Building your reputation is one of the most important things you can do in your marketing. There’s nothing more powerful than this – I’d much rather buy from someone who looked as though they knew what they were doing. Wouldn’t you?

So, if it’s that important, how do you go about doing this?

Well, there are lots of ways you can build your reputation as an expert in your field. Here’s just a few – I’m sure you’ll be able to think of other things you can do too:

1. Speaking on the radio
2. Commenting on a subject in the press
3. Speaking at an event or a conference
4. Having a letter that you sent to a newspaper or magazine published
5. Being associated with a major organisation
6. Participating in on-line forums
7. Entering awards
8. Being seen on your local television news
9. Writing and publishing articles
10. Having a regular column either in the press or on-line
11. Writing a blog or contributing to the blogs of others
12. Writing e-books, reports and tips sheets
13. Holding an event and giving a demonstration
14. Being an expert on a talk show (go on, be brave!)
15. Write and publish a book

I know not all of these ideas will appeal to you, but if any of them do, go out there and give them a go. The more you concentrate on building your reputation, the more people will perceive you as an expert – and that can’t be a bad thing at all.

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides advice and help to small business owners on their marketing and to people starting up in business.

Profile updates

It's day 2 on my social networking and I've been very dedicated this afternoon and updated all my profiles on all of the social networking sites I'm on. They are:

• Konnects
• Spoke
• People4Business
• Xing
• Connect Buzz
• Ryze
• Marzar
• Plaxo
• Linkedin
• Ecademy
• Facebook
• Twitter

It's unlikely that I'll use all these for general day to day updates - as I prefer Outlook, but at least all the profiles are updated so that people can now find me on Google etc.

Learning how to Twitter

Well, I've finally given in to all the media hype and have decided that I'd better learn how these social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter etc) work. I've already got a Facebook account (more about that later) and I've just signed up to Twitter. Within seconds I've got three followers already - popular at last!

Let's see what the day brings.

My Twitter account by the way is http://twitter.com/helen350 if you want to follow me.