Boost Your Business

Ideas and tools to help you boost your business success – and keep your balance between work and play.

Anam Mara, Part 2: Seaside

September 1, 2011
View of Trá Na Rossan beach from Atlantic Drive

In my last post, I blogged about Part 1 of my escape to a friend’s cottage in Donegal; a trip that was meant to be a time of writing and creating but came to be more about reading and gestating. This is the second post of

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Anam Mara, Part 1: Fireside

June 18, 2011
Anam Mara cottage, Donegal

In my last post, I blogged about my imminent escape to a cottage in Donegal, for a self-imposed creative retreat. There is a tv in the cottage, but I wasn’t going to be using it; and there’s no internet access. My plan was to bring

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Creative Retreat – Offline ’til 21/3!

March 10, 2011
View of Mulroy Bay, Downings, Co. Donegal

Well, after a really, really busy January and February giving various talks, training courses and residentials, along with some one-to-one coaching, I’m off on a creative retreat! My plan for Soul Ambition was always to develop lots of self-study courses people could use for their

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Low on Money, Rich in Time? Consider Skill Swapping

February 22, 2011
Time & Money: Photo of a pocketwatch on a wallet

So you’re trying to improve your career prospects with some new training, but you’ve no spare funds to invest in it. Or maybe you’re out of work and struggling to pay for necessary (and not-so-necessary) services. You’ve got little money, but a lot of time.

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Facebook for Business: I’ve Done It Wrong – Help!

December 13, 2010
Jimmy Saville enjoying a nice cup of tea with a robot dog and small boy

So, you’ve read the Facebook for Business: The Basics post, and you had a sinking feeling as you realised you had accidentally breached Terms of Service (ToS), by using a personal profile instead of a business page – adding friends, posting primarily business content – and/or

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Facebook for Business: The Basics

November 26, 2010
Facebook pages graphic

Get It Right from the Start – Save your Time, Money and Reputation Social media for business is still a relatively new field, and many business owners find it something of a minefield. Some of them are setting up profiles and pages in a panic,

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Knowledge Is Confidence

October 25, 2010
Tech Support Cheat Sheet Image

When I do my confidence-building courses and coaching, I ask people what their biggest confidence saboteurs are. And one of the most common, in people’s business or personal lives, is a lack of knowledge. People are often scared of looking stupid, or ignorant, and dread

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Smells Like Clever Marketing

October 22, 2010

You know your viral video’s a true success when it’s been parodied by Sesame Street. In an earlier post, I shared the ever-so-brilliant Old Spice ad which won the Grand Prix for film and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial this year. Sesame Street’s

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Make Your Own Luck (With Help From Other People)

October 22, 2010
Five-Leaf Clover by Mikko Luntiala, on Flickr

If you believe you are lucky, you are more likely to be lucky. Research shows that optimists achieve more, live longer and enjoy better relationships with people. So whilst there are times when it pays to be pessimistic – when the consequences of an action

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Getting to Grips With Twitter [Updated]

June 11, 2010
Cartoon of blue bird holding "Follow Me" banner

In a 2010 report, marketing company SocialTwist published some statistics on Internet sharing trends, based on analysis of over one million referral messages shared via its ‘Tell-a-Friend’ tool. Of the sharing activity they studied, email still accounted for more than half of referrals, but social

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Social Media – Useful Links & Tools: Blogging

June 11, 2010
Wordpress_logo

This is an updated, electronic version of a document I used to send out as a follow-up to the bigger, more valuable conversations enjoyed during Soul Ambition “Making the Most of Social Media” workshops. If you didn’t attend one, you may like to read this

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Social Media – Why Bother?

June 11, 2010

So much buzz about social media – but why bother? Well, whether you’re trying to raise your own profile – as a job-seeker perhaps, or a sole trader, or that of your business, a cause or a charity, you ignore the benefits of social media at your peril. Here are 12 reasons why you should engage in social media, with examples of how people are doing it well.

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Social Media – Useful Links & Tools: LinkedIn

June 11, 2010
"What is LinkedIn?" icon

LinkedIn reached its 100 million member threshold in March 2011, and employers are increasingly using social media sites in their recruitment. (89% of employers will do so in 2011, according to this infographic.) For business owners, networking is of course crucial. LinkedIn’s been offering online,

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