As all our Facebook profiles have now defaulted over to the new timelines, you have probably noticed you have a huge space at the top of your profile for a cover photo.

I was having a play around with myFBcovers.com and was inspired by the photo college you could create with photos of your Facebook Friends. It got me thinking about which of my online friends have had big influence on me over the past year and decided to pick out and tag them.

So I thought what better way to kick off my blog in 2012 with a post dedicated to those who have inspired me over the past year.

Some names you will probably recognise and others you may not. But I highly recommend you check each and every one out and see how they may be able to help shape and influence 2012 for you, too.

Thank you to everyone listed below who has helped inspire, influence and shape my last year. 2012 is going to rock and I look forward to reading, listening, learning and growing more from you all over the next 12 months.

Here goes:

Carrie Wilkinson for her energy, inspiration and get-up-and-go attitude to running a business from home

Website: http://barefoot-executive.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/barefoot_exec

Fiona Humberstone for her candidness, friendship and ability to make me question myself and think bigger than I do.

Website: http://www.flourishstudios.co.uk/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/fionahumberston

Alicia Cowan, Tracey Rissik and Wendy Chamier for being the resident tech experts over at the Web Tech Club and generously shared their time and expertise with all the members.

Alica Cowan
Website: http://www.aliciacowan.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/AbsoluteAlicia

Tracey Rissik
Website: http://thesimplewebcompany.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TraceyRissik

Wendy Chamier
Website: http://www.wendychamier.co.uk/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wendychamier

Vanessa Lanham-Day for her energy and drive in bringing together an awesome bunch of business owners and giving me a good kick up the bum to get things done.

Website: http://www.cproject.co.uk/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/VanessaLanham

Lollie Garcez for being my EC Buddy and being that all-important “devil on my shoulder”.

Website: http://www.thespeedreadingcoach.com/

Graham Jones for being a font of all knowledge on anything internet.

Website: http://www.grahamjones.co.uk/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/grahamjones

Tom Evans for showing me the way and challenging me to get my book done and published (not long now!)

Website: http://www.thebookwright.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/thebookwright

Elizabeth Cairns for giving me the courage and space to commit to my book in the first instance.

Website: http://www.amovita.co.uk/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ElizabethCairns

Nicola Bird for being an inspiration and proving that hard work, persistent and mindset pays off!

Website: http://www.jigsawbox.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/nicolabird

Wendy Shand for her honesty, support and being an amazing advocate over the years.

Website: http://www.totstotravel.co.uk/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/totstotravelmum

Carmen MacDougall for her persistence, ability to overcome incredible obstacles and being one of the strongest ladies I know.

Website: http://vact.co.uk/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/vatrainingpro

Tone Tellefsen Hughes for becoming a top business buddy who constantly amazes me with her ability to take action and grow her practice.

Website: http://www.lucksyardclinic.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/lucksyard

Lisa Turner for her enquiring mind, proving that you can have a hugely successful business without losing your spirituality and being able to make me laugh out loud with her wicked sense of humour.

Website: http://www.psycademy.co.uk/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/DrLisaTurner

I’ve listed each person’s website and Twitter profile and I urge you to reach out, sign up for their blogs or newsletters or follow their tweets.

And why not do the same. Come back, comment below and share a link to your list of 2011 influencers. It would be great to see who’s helped made the person you are today.

Isn’t doing business with your competitors crazy?

However, did you know that one of the quickest ways of attracting new clients to your business is to use other business’ databases?

And that even includes using your direct competitors.

Now I am not suggesting in the slightest that you are to break in to their offices overnight and steal their client information! But what I am suggesting is that you collaborate and look at what joint ventures you can create.

Joint ventures are when two [or more] businesses join forces to create a more powerful force in the marketplace. Think of as two heads are better than one.

Or more importantly, two databases are better than one!

Let me give you an example.

Jenny is a fitness trainer. She works primarily with her clients on a 1-2-1 basis but is finding it hard going fitting enough sessions in to her day whilst still generating the income that she is aiming for.

She has decided to start offering group sessions and fitness training programmes as a way of working with more clients, increasing her cash flow yet reducing the number of hours she works. But the big problem is her database. It’s just not big enough to market her programmes to.

So rather than spend hundreds of pounds on advertising in the local newspaper or even more on buying a database, she decides to seek out other businesses who have the clients she is looking for.

She approaches her local gym.  Some may think this is a crazy idea as her local gym is a direct competitor of her business, but the manager of the gym is interested in talking. Although they have staff working there, they haven’t really got their act together in regards to personal training sessions and motivating their members.

You see, although they have a strong membership at present, very few people are coming in and using the gym. And they know when this happens, they start getting lots of cancellations.

By offering the gym members a discount on Jenny’s fitness programme, this gives the gym a great benefit to add to their membership subscription without it costing them a thing. It should also encourage the members to train more in the gym in between Jenny’s sessions because they are more motivated to train by themselves now they feel fitter, thus reducing the chance of cancellations.

OK, so this story is hypothetical.  This could be too crazy for a lot of gym managers who just wouldn’t entertain this idea and turn Jenny down flat.

But we are in a very interesting economy at the moment. Sticking with the norm and assuming that a particular business will not want to talk to you is, well frankly madness!

Many businesses are experiencing huge slowdowns and one of the advantages to you is that slowdowns cause problems. If you can solve the right problems, it’s good for your business. And of course, good for the other businesses, too.

More and more businesses are looking at joint ventures and building collaborative partnerships – even with direct competitors! So doing business with your competitors really isn’t such a crazy idea.

The trick is being able to create an offer that benefits both parties, plus their customers.

If you are struggling to attract the right clients to your business, joint ventures could be the quickest [and cheapest] way of moving your business forward right now.

Who could you start talking to and create a win-win situation for you both?

If you are not learning new stuff, you’re not moving your business forward.

It’s as simple as that!

Don’t give me that “I haven’t got time to pick up a book”.

If you are stuck in the endless cycle of answering emails, updating your Facebook Page, going to meetings and then rushing back to answer more emails, then yes, I can see you probably haven’t got time to pick up a book.

But … problems start if you never come up for air. You are so busy doing the doing, that if someone waved a better way of doing that doing, you’d probably not even notice.

And this why I believe 100% that reading (or audio if you prefer to listen) is absolutely good for business.

Even me … a self-confesses web tech geek who loves everything Apple and Google … loves the smell and feel of a new book (although I do have my eye on that new Kindle – will be asking Santa for one of those!).

If I look back over the past seven years I have been working for myself, the times that I have had those Eureka moments – when my business has shifted forward in a leap – have almost all been created because of a book I was reading.

So I thought it may be helpful to share some of the books that shifted great things for me in my business.

February 2005 – The Aladdin Factor by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

I was feeling pretty crappy at this stage. 6 months young and very little in the way of any business success, my new business coach recommended I read this book. I was downward spiralling and had no belief in my ability to create a successful business but this, albeit cheesy and super-American book, gave me bite-sized nuggets that I still use today. My favourite being “Some will, some won’t, so what, someone else is waiting”.

March 2005 – Multiple Streams of Coaching Income by Andrea J Lee

There are dozens of books on this topic today, but this was a very new concept back in 2005 (especially for UK based coaches). I still refer back to my original scribbles from time to time and Andrea opened my eyes to Pink Spoon taster offers.

October 2005 – E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

An oldie but a classic that absolutely should be read by anyone and everyone who wants to run a business, rather find themselves trapped in to a self-employed job. This book was like coming home after a long, long trip. The content just made total sense to me and it gave me a way forward to act big, whilst still being small.

April 2006 – Permission Based Marketing by Seth Godin

I had been committed to building my database via my newsletter for more than a year before I read this book. But this is my favourite of all Seth’s books. Practical, advice – perfect for the small business owner – on how to market to people who give you permission. So much more effective than thrusting unwanted spam in to their inboxes!

July 2007 – Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion by Goldstein, Marting and Cialdini

I struggled with the classic “Influence” by Cialdini which is a popular recommendation. But it was a little too scientific and heavy going for me so I was delighted to get my hands on this book. I soaked in the stories and this book has greatly influenced the way that I write today. If you are struggling to find a writing style that sells without being “in your face salesy”, then this is a top read.

October 2010 – UnMarketing – Stop Marketing Start Engaging by Scott Stratten

I read plenty of books in between but this was the next big book that stopped me in my tracks. Like Gerber’s E-Myth, this book just felt so right. Scott’s writing style is refreshingly honest and I loved the way he stuck two fingers up at the internet marketing guru way of making money – which to be honest I was having enough of too.

August 2011 – The Botty Rules by Nigel Botterill

This summer I needed a kick in the right direction and this book woke me up and booted me up the backside with just the right amount of force! Honest and practical, Nigel’s big mantra is focused around getting stuff done. There are plenty of Botty Rules but my favourite is Number One “As a business owner, you are 100% responsible for what happens in your business. It’s all your fault!”

There are many more books but these where the ones which jump out from my bookshelf. Some have been read on more than one occasion.

So which ones are you going to order and read?

And which books have transformed and change the way you do business?

Last week I was blogging about 80% of your competitors are doing it wrong.  It pays to be different and stand out from the crowd.

On the day this blog went out, I got a tweet from someone I met at a conference a  year ago.  Janet Mohapi-Banks and I had a chat about her cup cake business and she picked my brains about how this sort of business could work.  She loved creating cakes and felt that the cup cake trend was something to focus on.

The tweet I got from Janet last week made me smile.  You see she had just blogged about how she had turned her back on this cup cake market and had decided to go premium!  Specialising now in luxury wedding cakes and sculptural pieces of cake art is her new direction. Way to go, Janet!

With Janet’s permission, here is her story.

From Janet’s Blog

I recently announced on Twitter that we would no longer be taking orders for cookies and cupcakes. All orders that are currently in discussion will of course be honoured.

I’ve been asked a few times to explain my decision so I thought I would tell you all.

My great pleasure and joy lies in creating wonderful works of edible art and although some of the cupcakes and cookies I’ve created have been good fun, it’s not really the area that I want my business to concentrate on. By not taking further bookings of cookies and cupcakes it means that we can concentrate our efforts in creating the large luxury cakes that we are best known for.

Why then, you might ask, did I offer cupcakes and cookies in the first place? Well the answer to that is simple; I thought I had to! With other cake companies starting to offer these products I felt that I should too otherwise I would be “missing out” somehow.

What I have come to realise though is that doing something just because somebody else is doing it, is completely the wrong reason to do it!

At the moment there is a big trend toward dessert tables offering cupcakes, miniature cupcakes, cake pops and cookies, and there are cake companies that have made them the focus of their business and they do it extremely well. Tempting Tables by Tempting Cakes are a prime example of beautiful dessert tables.

This is not where my heart lies though, and it is not where my business’s heart lies either. There are many sectors within the cake industry and as we don’t wish to be all things to everyone, we are limiting our products on offer to those we both enjoy and excel at. Our speciality is in creating large luxury wedding cakes and celebration cakes and tall, exquisitely iced miniature cakes. Therefore, along with our private parties, these will now be the only products we offer.

Talking of our private parties, please note that we shall soon be discontinuing the cookie and cupcake parties too and only offering parties in miniature cake and large cake decorating.

So there you have it. We’ve cut our product line in half, but the half we have left can never be beaten.

Click to check out some of Janet’s amazing creations

Wanted to share a BIG lesson I’ve learnt over the past couple of months.  Recently I’ve joined the Nigel Botterill’s Entrepreneurial Circle.  Love him or hate him, you can’t deny he’s been rather successful over recent years.  And it’s exactly that reason why I am loving the stuff he does.

But the BIG lesson I’ve learnt is a pretty obvious one really.  But with all obvious stuff, it only needs one person to flip something around and phrase it in a certain way to make total sense to you, doesn’t it?

Nigel claims (and I’m sure this is to be true!) that out of all business owners:

1% are super successful and very wealthy
4% are rich and doing very well
15% at getting there and making good money
60% are getting by
20% are struggling

It probably won’t surprise you that these figures reflect the infamous 80:20 rule.  And this is how I learnt my BIG lesson.

What these figures mean is that 80% of my competitors are doing it wrong!  And 80% of your competitors are doing wrong, too.

So stop copying what everyone around you is doing …. and start focusing your energies on doing something different to make you stand out from the crowd.

And that’s my BIG lesson.  Cool, hey?

Earlier this week, I published an article about copy cat business owners; the one’s who “borrow” your ideas, marketing copy and design.

It invoked several comments, but this particular one I felt deserved it’s own blog post.

With Cate’s permission, I wanted to share with you what she wrote.  And it’s a story I thought you would like to read and learn from!

Cate’s Story

This is the original comment that Cate wrote:

“Hi Karen. I’m going through a similar thing at the moment. When I founded Bambolina in 2006 I thought I had done everything I could to protect the business but my understandings of business names vs trademarks was clearly woolly. Anyway, in 2007 a German company registered a trademark for a range of dolls called Bambolina and their logo was almost identical to my original one – there were even flowers positioned where my daisies were.

A few years went by with me being blissfully ignorant until a customer rang to say that she wanted some clothes for her Bambolina doll. I said that I wasn’t aware of a doll called Bambolina and that I didn’t have clothes to fit them. My search started and I too did an awful lot of huffing and puffing and stomping around!

Bit by bit the Bambolina dolls started to appear in the UK is bargain stores such as TK Max and a cheap gift internet site. In February we went to Nuremberg and found the suppliers stand to see the dolls themselves. They were the very opposite of what Bambolina is all about – cheap looking, nasty fabrics, too pink – just not a quality doll.

And at the end of the day I don’t have a leg to stand on. They are trademarked and Bambolina in the UK isn’t. Had I done something 4 years ago maybe I would have had a case. As I don’t wish to be associated with the company concerned I have two options open to me. I can either fight or change my business name.

As I am a small independent on line retailer in the UK I don’t have the money to fight, so I have been registering a string of prospective business names. Fingers crossed the third one will be my last attempt as I haven’t received an objection yet, and I will only have to change the first 5 letters of Bambolina. Then the hard graft starts to swop over my website, update all my links, create a marketing campaign to let my customers know of the new name etc etc.

And the moral of the story – TRADEMARK!!!!

It is easy to do yourself on line and costs £250 to do so. Before you start a business complete a trade mark/business name search. Again this can be done on line yourself using Companies House and the Business Link Trademark checker.

Or you can pay a business to do the search for you such as Start Biz. This business will also register business names if your business is not a company.

Did you even know there were such things as Trademark Attorneys? There are lots of law firms specialising in this field. I only found out about their existence at a dinner party when I sat by one. If only our friend had held the party 5 years earlier I might have been OK. Wish me luck!”

Recommended Resources for more info

Claire also went on to recommend these two resources to me via email:

“Claire Evans from http://www.fhs.co.uk gave me the advice and I would most definitely go back to her if I need more help in the future and happily pay.

http://www.start.biz/home.htm - register business names here and complete searches, and more.”

What thoughts do you have? Have you had similar experiences that you would like to share?

Photo Credit:  BusinessSarah

When it comes to marketing workshops, programmes and webinars the number one BIGGEST mistake small businesses make is spending time developing the content first.

I ran a session at the Web Tech Club last month on how to run virtual events – teleseminars and webinars – and this was my biggest rant of the session (and I do like to rant!!)

Typical Small Business Owner

Here’s what happens for most coaches, trainers and consultants:

“I want to run a workshop. I’ve been told this is a great way of making more money in working with more clients.”

Good thinking

“What topic shall I do?  I know, I love talking about growing tomatoes (OK – run me on this one!!).  I could easily run a whole day workshop on growing tomatoes.  I love tomatoes.  I’ve got stacks to say about tomatoes and my clients really need to learn more about growing tomatoes.  I’ve seen how they treat their tomato plants!”

OK – it’s good to focus on what you are good at.  There’s no point trying to promote something that you are not an expert in.  BUT … assuming you know what your clients need is WRONG WRONG WRONG!

“I’ll spend the next couple days planning out what I will deliver during this tomato growing workshop.  After all I want to be confident in what I am selling.  If I’ve got nothing to say then it’s going to be tough to promote it.”

Huh?! You’ve already told yourself you are an expert in tomato growing.  Why do you need to convince yourself first that you’ve got enough to say.  Of course you have!!

2 days later …

“OK, got the content together. Really pleased with the way I’ve designed my workbook.  I could sell that as a separate product.  Glad I spent that £65 on getting a graphic designer to come up with template and front page for the workbook. It looks very professional. I feel ready to sell it now.”

Gulp!! You’ve spent £65 on graphic design already but made no money from the workshop?

4 days later …

“No one is interested!! I’ve emailed everyone I know and no one is in the slightest bit interested in the best way of growing tomatoes.  What a waste of time.  I’m never going to run another workshop again.  I’m no good at this.”

There goes another demotivated, hacked off business owner whose dream was crushed at the first hurdle.

The 3 questions you need to answer first

This is why you must NEVER EVER spend time creating content for a workshop, product, book or anything else until you know these things:

1.  Your target audience – who do you want to work with?

2.  What is their pain – what keeps them up at night?  (What you think it is, is often no where near what it really is!!)

3.  What is it that you can deliver to soothe their pain?

And before you write the content, you promote it!  That’s right.

You work on your sales page, explaining what is your client will come away with and benefit from.  You may well have the course or content outlined as Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 or in chapter headings.

But you DON’T write the actual word for word content.

Sell before you write the content

You go out and sell tickets or pre-launch orders to make sure that your target audience will buy before you spend the time creating the content.

I know it will seem scary at first to sell something you haven’t finished, but I promise you that after the first time of doing it this way, you will never go back to your old ways!

Copy Cat

Earlier this week, I got an email from a new subscriber to my newsletter telling me that one of the biggest challenges they are faced with was that people were copying their brand and ideas.

Now, I just want to be clear that I’m not a legal expert!  If someone has stolen intellectual or creative property, then there may be a legal case.  Plagiarism is illegal  - but speak to legal expert to be sure; someone like Suzanne Dibble who is a legal expert.

People copy successful people

But the problem with this problem is that this ain’t never going to go away if you ever want to be successful!

I remember getting all hot under the collar in my first year of business when a “friendly competitor” launched a brand new workshop programme that had almost the identical name to mine.  Shock, horror (plus lots of expletives that I couldn’t possibly share here!!) was my immediate reaction.  ”How very dare she!!”

I went in to full scale rage that spread over several days.  I walked around, muttering under my breath, wondering what I could do to put a stop to her plans.

It’s easy to get angry

But what good did this do me?

1.  I didn’t really have a leg to stand on.  My workshop title wasn’t exactly trademarked.  Nor where the words that I used unique in any way.

2.  When I started to work through my anger, I realised that I had actually taken the idea of “my” workshop title from a couple of other workshops I had seen promoted on the web.  Although I thought I was being unique, I wasn’t really.  I had taken inspiration from others to help me in my own creativity.

Every book we read, every advert we see and every person we interact with is going to give us inspiration and ideas.  It’s not stealing when you put it together with your own uniqueness and twist.  If you ask a graphic designer to copy a well known brand’s logo, then yes – you are probably going to get a solicitor’s letter through your door one day.  But take well known logos along to the meeting to show them what you like and what you don’t like, is all part of the creation process.

3. The negative anger that I felt weakened me.  I was incredibly unproductive that week.  Instead of focusing on promoting my own workshop programme (which was doing rather well!), I turned my energies in to destroying my own productivity.  Not good for growing a business, is it?!

4. Did the other person really care about what I thought?  No!  Did she really do a better job of what I was doing? No!  Someone can steal your brand and all your ideas but you can never steal “you”.  And at the end of the day, it’s “you” that your clients and customers buy in to.

Most of the time it’s a mindset battle that’s worth fighting … not a legal one

This was never going to be a legal advice blog post.  And for goodness sake, if you feel you have been legally wronged, then get talking to a legal expert and put a plan in place.

But never stew over this.  Having seen several colleagues of mine over the years get all bent out of shape over other people stealing their ideas, I saw their anger and frustration hold them back on their own plans.

When you are successful, people will always try to copy you.  A compliment, as many of you may say.

But, don’t waste your precious energy and time getting angry with them for it because they can never be “you”.

What do you think?  Disagree or got something else to add?

When you run your own business, it’s easy to get personal about what you do. You care passionately about the images and messages that are used to represent your business. You worry if a spelling mistake or grammatical error causes offence. You worry that the price you want to charge isn’t too expensive to put people off.

You may even go to extremes and worry that the image on your About Us page is 10 pixels out of place and that the letterheads you got printed specially for a direct mailing do not quite match the pantone of your logo.

Your business is a representation of you … and you want it to be perfect!

But the problem with this ideology of this perfection is that perfection causes rot.

Rot in your marketing. Rot in the products you create. Rot in the way you attract clients to your business.

Perfection is a disease that kills your business in a matter of months!

When I first started up in business in 2004, I discovered a coach called Andrea J Lee. One of her catch phrases was “Completion, Not Perfection”. And thank god I saw the light early on.

This is a message that I carry with me day in, day out. I slap it in the faces of my clients when they go on for too long about the detail of wanting to get it “just right”. And it was the BIG message that I got again when I was fortunate to attend Nigel Botterill’s Marketing Madness Day in Bolton this Monday (BTW it was never billed as “Marketing Madness” but what became apparent to the 500 people in the room that day was that it was exactly that – Madness!!)

Nigel and the Entrepreneurial Circle team decided it would be kind of exciting to change the agenda of the normal marketing day planned and launch a business, live to an audience of 500 people. At 7pm Sunday evening, Nigel told us what they were launching and they had just 24 hours to make sales.

Everything was built from scratch: the website, e-commerce platform to enable them to make sales online, the Facebook Fan Page (which incidentally created 62 likes, converting 2 of these Likers to paying customers, proving that when social media is done right … it can be profitable!), email campaigns, voice broadcasts, Google AdWords campaign, SMS texting … in fact there were 16 different types of communications and marketing channels used to set up and promote this business.

OK, they had a team of 4 giving it their all to get this business up and running. But even with that team of 4, none of us where in any doubt that they proved what could be achieved in 24 hours was quite inspiring.

You see they didn’t faff about with image placements. They didn’t change the logo, even when the whole room thought it would look better with a quick graphic change. They made a mistake and missed out a tracking url in one of the email campaigns, but still sent it out anyway.

They were against the clock … and good was good enough.

And that clock clicks for you too! So you may not be under pressure to perform in front of 500 people within a 24 hour time period. But you are under pressure to create that product so you can generate revenue. You are under pressure to get that website live so your potential clients can find you and do business with you.

If you don’t think you are under that pressure, then give up. Just pass all your leads on to your competitor down the road. Your clients aren’t that fussy. They just want their problems solved and they will hand over their hard earned cash to someone who can meet their needs, wants and expectations.

Tough love? Well, that’s what I give. Because good is good enough.

And if I find you moving a website image around by 10 pixels to the right. And then again to the left. Or spell checking an email newsletter for the 3rd time … I will hunt you down.

Get implementing because good is good enough [rant over!]

Remember the human beings sitting right next to you!

As tweeting and facebooking becomes more the norm at networking events and conferences, social media is starting to affect people’s sociability.  I’m sure we’ve all tutted at some point or another at the growing concerns that children spend more and more time glued to some form of screen.  But have you stopped and looked around you at the last networking event or conference you were at?

The adults are all doing it too!

I was an all day event last week.  Drove up to Birmingham and there must have been 50 odd people in the room, all coming from near and far.  We were all there to learn about marketing and come away with business ideas, so it wasn’t your typical networking event.  But networking was still to be had as we milled around, drinking coffee, waiting for the event to start at 10am.

As I looked around the room, I was amazed as I counted a dozen or so people engrossed in their phones.  Whether they were tweeting, checking emails or just adding their Farmville estate – I don’t know.  But these tiny glowing screens where sucking the sociability out of them.

Sure, a few of these guys would have been nervous, possibly one of the first few events they had been to as a business owner. I remember that feeling of “Oh gawd, I feel like a fraud.  No one is going to believe that I am capable of working for myself!!” and hanging around the coffee table, smiling nervously at anyone who would care to glance my way.  But these blessed smart phones are creating the perfect excuse to hide.  To avoid jumping in at the deep end and introducing yourself to someone … who may just be your next client.  Or at the very least, may know someone who could be your next client.

Two years ago, tweeting and facebooking was a novelty at events like these.  The very fact you were on your phone updating one or two of your social profiles created a conversation point.  Others craning their necks to see what you were doing and you were able to share your knowledge on how these tools worked.

But now, everyone has Twitter account (although they may not know what to do with it!!).  I love social media – don’t get me wrong.  It’s now become an integral part of many small businesses marketing strategies.  And tweeting and facebooking during events can be a useful networking exercise … in moderation.

The excuse of being able to tweet from a live event so that you can share with your countless online friends what and where you are, only distracts from the very essence of what you could be doing … interacting with some real, live people.

Look up from your smartphone screens, people!  Don’t play in your virtual world when you have real, live potential contacts and clients right there in that room with you.

Photo credit:  Adam Timworth