What do you do? And how do you tell people?

When you go to networking meetings and someone asks “What do you do?” can you answer succinctly, in a way that leaves people wanting to know more? Can you get your message across in one minute – or less – in a way that everyone can understand? Or do you leave people confused, bored or [...]

FastTracking: Smart moves for smart businesses

One thing I see quite regularly in business is the need for new blood. Many small businesses find themselves in a cycle – the ‘feast and famine’ rollercoaster. They spend lots of time doing marketing, generating new exciting work and clients and then get wholly distracted by the work these clients bring in. It’s wonderful [...]

What’s the best marketing you’ve done this year?

What marketing have you done that has really worked? What have you done that hasn’t been a great success? What was your best effort and what will you be doing more of less of next year? 2010 has been a busy year for Appletree so we’ve taken a look at the different marketing we’ve done, with [...]

Why competition is better than collaboration

Some networking groups only allow one person per ‘industry’ to attend their meetings. For some of us, this is not as simple as it sounds. If you’re in marketing, you could be involved in PR, online marketing, off line marketing, copywriting – or all of the above. If you ‘do websites’ you might do SEO, [...]

Twitter isn’t just a gossip engine

Twitter isn’t just about sending your followers chatty messages constrained to 140 characters, or valuable tips that can be shared. You can use it like a search engine too, or a method of exposing your complaint and getting results! Like a search engine: I have seen many questions put out on Twitter. If you have [...]

When you speak, does the room listen?

Do you go to networking meetings and leave not remembering what many of other people said they do? Do you go to presentations and stop listening after the first five minutes? If you answered yes to either of these questions, it’s because the people talking didn’t do enough for you to listen them. Does the [...]

What makes you different?

On 1 September 2010 we took over running Ladies That Lunch … And Men Too.  This networking group has been running for about 7 years and I was a member when it first started. We’re now looking to grow the business, opening new venues and increasing the membership. To do this we need to know [...]

Who is Better at Networking – Men or Women?

How do men do it? Having been to quite a few networking meetings, I’ve seen that men are really good at going into a room full of people and starting up a conversation with someone they’ve never met before. They don’t seem to worry, as women do, about ‘getting it wrong’. In fact, they probably [...]