Read our 11 things to avoid doing on Twitter below.

• Don’t give a running commentary on your personal life

You’ve probably heard people say Twitter is 50% social, 50% business. Bear this in mind when posting your Tweets because your colleagues, clients etc probably don’t care that you’re having pizza for tea or are about to run a bath.

• Don’t swear

This should be pretty obvious but a lot of Twitter users swear happily and don’t seem to care their customers and suppliers can read what they’re saying. What impression would your biggest customer get if they read something like “I f***ing hate Monday mornings” on your Twitter profile?

• Don’t try the hard sell

Remember it’s called Social Media for a reason. Nobody wants to hear sales message after sales message from you. Get to know people and build up an online community rather than just trying to make money all the time.

• Don’t use automated messages

Social Media is about having a conversation online. Don’t send an automated message to people when you could write a more personal one.

• Don’t automatically follow everyone who follows you

When someone follows you have a look at their profile and see if what they tweet about is relevant or interesting to you. Why clog up your life with stuff you don’t want to read?

• Don’t criticise your clients or employer

Again, you’d think this was just common sense but if you’ve got a lot of Twitter followers you may forget that client/boss you’ve just ranted about is actually able to read what you’ve just said about them.

• Don’t hide behind a company logo

Twitter is a social platform, so don’t get all corporate and hide behind your company logo. People buy from people as they say, so get a picture of yourself on there.

• Don’t ignore mentions of your company name

If anyone posts something positive or negative about your business on Twitter don’t just ignore it. Twitter is about interacting with people and thanking them for praise and dealing with complaints in a professional and timely manner will show that you care.

• Don’t ignore your competitors

Following your competitors on Twitter is a great way of getting to know them better and what makes them tick. By building up a friendly relationship with your competitors they may pass you work when they are over capacity or be able to help you out when you’re too busy.

• Don’t forget Twitter is now indexed by Google in real time

It’s not just your followers who will be able to see what you’re Tweeting about. Unless you protect your tweets they may be indexed by Google and displayed in the search engine results too.

It’s maybe not such a good idea then to have a go at one of your competitors on Twitter thinking they’ll never read it.

• Don’t forget to do some ‘real’ work

Twitter can become very addictive and before you know it you may have spent a couple of hours or more on it without doing any work.

It’s important to remember that Twitter is just one part of your overall social media and online strategy so don’t let it detract from you getting on with running your business or doing your job.

I then started thinking; did I have the right title for this article, in an instant I thought oh yes I did!

What normal person would try to set up in business, work all hours and still want to walk out for that next round of disappointments and knock backs? We must be mad!!!!

After the week I have just had, the next time you feel like “what am I doingall of this for?” look up and take a good look around you may just see you have quite a few people standing in your corner.

Helpful tips for any small business owner:

• Be prepared to listen you don’t know everything.
• Things are not always that bad; you will never be the first to face the problems you have right now, there will always be a solution, find someone who’s worked out your problem, Google it!!
• Break your comfort zone; you will be surprised how good that feels, don’t always stick to what you are good at, don’t be a ‘woos’
• Be humble
• Take advice

Simple, easy??!

So why is that sometimes we just can’t see the way forward? That we get in a rut? You’ve only got one option and that’s to come out fighting!

You will get there if you keep going, if you need a little advice just drop me a reply and I will get back to you.

Getting someone who knows what they’re doing  to shout about how great your products and services are is part and parcel of staying successful in business: whether you’re a club in need of pretty posters and flyers or a financial institution requiring a fabulous shiny website.

But who exactly do you choose to do your bigging up and how much does it matter to you whether or not they’re a 100-strong agency with glass-fronted premises in a trendy part of town?

Big changes

“I think at one time if you wanted the best marketing brains trained on your marketing and advertising campaigns then you did have to go to the big name marketing agencies. I’m not sure that that’s necessarily true now. For one thing I think that the internet has given people a lot more flexibility in how they work and it’s pretty common to hear about talented people breaking away from big agencies and setting up their own micro agencies.”

Big names vs big savings

“I think a lot of savvy business people are starting to realise that smaller agencies can deliver too, particularly as they’re often run by the people who made certain big agencies what they were in the first place. And in the current climate micro agencies are pretty attractive to customers because they can offer prices that big agencies can’t match because of their increased overheads and wage bills.”

Flexible working

“Having experienced both set ups, one of biggest differences that I’ve found is that micro agencies can be a lot more flexible in the way they work. They often have staff who work remotely – even dotted around the globe – and are flexible enough to provide customer service right around the clock including weekends.

Clients can often deal directly with the guy who’s designing their website or writing their brochure copy too. With big agencies, clients deal exclusively with  account management staff which can sometimes add another layer of complication into the communication process.”

Trust is a must

“I suppose the main thing has got to be earning the trust of your customers though and that’s true of both huge established agencies and micro agencies. Once you’ve had good work from someone you’re likely to go back for more regardless of whether they’ve got fancy premises and 100 staff or not.”

What do you think?

Have your say by submitting a comment below – we’d really appreciate your viewpoint. . . . .

OK, a CMS is simply a database that sits behind your website, that you (as the user) can access (via the Internet), by going to a website address and entering a password.

Once you have logged into this area, you will then see a list of the pages you have on your website. From here you will be able to go into your pages and edit the content, which, when saved, will immediately change your website.

For business owners this gives you several massive benefits:

• urgent business  / marketing decisions can be implemented immediately (such as menu price changes)
• no more charges from your web designer for making simple content changes
• no waiting for typo’s or errors to be corrected – everything can be changed instantly
• changes can be made when you want them to and can be scheduled when you need them

Good website content management systems also offer several features that can improve your rankings in the search engines (eg. Google). These include:

• the ability to individually title your website pages
• the ability to customise your url extensions (website addresses)
• the option to add specific page intro information you want the search engines to display
• new pages that are automatically added to an XML sitemap

Remember, just because you have access to a CMS it does not mean you have to take on all the burden of updating the website yourself. Share the responsibility with other people in your business or your website team – this is another benefit in that website CMS’s are so easy to use that several people can all chip in and help.

Overall, content management systems should be a must for anyone investing in a new website. With the speed of modern business it is essential that you have complete control over as much of your advertising and marketing as possible.

Next steps and further sources of information:

Would you like to see a demonstration of our Website Content Management System?  We will gladly come to your business and explain the benefits in more detail.

Would you like our team to evaluate your current website?  We offer free website evaluations and will gladly help you understand how effective your current website is.

Would you like us to quote for a new website for your business?  We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you and discuss a range of website options that would be available for you.

A simple reason really – if people are searching for companies that design websites in the UK, that’s what they search for on Google, Yahoo or any other other search engine, which makes this the phrase we want to be found under and associated with.

That’s why we sign off our websites with ‘Web Design UK’ to help anyone searching for suppliers within this arena find our company.

Subsequently, if they click on the link and go through to our website they will be able to click on countless examples of websites we have designed within the UK; flash driven, CMS driven, e-commerce, RSS, movies and multi-media – there are ample for them to view and gain a good indication as to the quality of our work.

Key links & further sources of information:

Solutions for Impact website – web design UK

Portfolio – websites designed by Solutions Four Impact

Contact – contact details for further information