What value can you add that no one else can, social media mastery made simple, and Balsamic Tomato Chicken with Basil
Published: Sat, 08/22/15
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Hi
We've just got back from two weeks in Isle d'Oleron near La Rochelle in France. We were away with my parents in law, brother in law and his wife and their children so Little Doddsy had a lovely time as she's really close to the three boys. They're all older than her and really look after her (although she absolutely holds her own too - she's not a pushover!).
There were a few funny things to report. My sister in law is a native French speaker and the boys are all bilingual. We shared a chalet with Simon's Mum and Dad, which was next to theirs, and my youngest nephew came in one day to tell us that a French child had just given him the nod that "there's an English family in the chalet next to yours"! He didn't let on that he was with us and considers himself to be English as they live here!
And I think my most entertaining memory from the holiday is that Little Doddsy packed a separate planned outfit for each day we were there. And I know that because she labelled them all from 1-13! It didn't last long in practice but for the first few days we were all checking that she'd appeared in the right clothes, sticky labels still attached!
They all had sailing and windsurfing lessons, Simon and his brother sailed and windsurfered respectively and I...didn't! Wetsuits and water are required so even on a hot day I'm not keen! Having said that I had to come home a day early as I was speaking at the aforementioned event in London last weekend. I had to get a ferry from the island to La Rochelle to fly home and the weather was atrocious. I think there were more people out the back of the boat being sick than were sitting inside, as it was so rough!
You may remember that last time I talked about the story I'd heard about 'mindfulness at the checkout' and about the tool 'focus@will' to help you to focus when you're working. Alan has a recommendation that he was reminded of that sort of combines the two. He went on a retreat with http://www.brahmakumaris.org/uk and they suggested a process called 'traffic control' where every hour, on the hour, for a few minutes you stop what you're doing and play relaxing music to 'centre yourself'. They all did it together on the retreat and he's continued it when working from home and found it really refreshing.
Drew said that the 'checkout' story reminded him of 'The Secret'. And Chris sent in a tip that if you use focus@will in two separate browers (e.g. Chrome and Firefox or on your laptop and on your smartphone) and play music in one and use the background cafe noise (creative beta) in the other, it facilitates major productivity! I guess the other option would be to go to a coffee shop and use headphones in one ear to play the music! Must give both a try.
Thank you for contributing guys; great to be able to share.
~~~~~~~~
Social Media Marketing Made Simple and in Less Time
Last week's blog took a bit of doing to get online as I was really struggling with the internet connectivity in France. My O2 phone was brilliant - their overseas deal is great. But I also went to the tourist office nearly every day to use theirs. It was really slow but at least allowed me to download and upload...until the last couple of days when I think they blocked my IP address as I could get onto the wifi on my phone but not via my laptop! I don't blame them. I was using it rather a lot ;-)
~~~~~~~~
Social Media Mastery Made Simple
Whilst I was away I got much clearer about my market for POWER to Live More and given it's very much aimed at entrepreneurs and business owners who work from home, I've decided to include more social media stuff than I'd originally planned (under the topic of Productivity), so thinking the webinar might be of interest to you and hence I might do a special webinar just for newsletter subscribers. Let me know if it is of interest by hitting reply and I'll let you know more next week.
I was listening to the New Rainmaker with Brian Clark podcast this week and he was talking with Robert Rose of the Content Marketing Institute. They were talking about how important relationships and experiences are nowadays in product marketing for the large brands as well as for SMEs. It's something that I have always talked about with regards to social media, focusing on building on relationships and avoiding talking about anonymous marketing, which doesn't interest me. As you know I include my personality very much in my business!
They suggested that for differentiation we ask ourselves questions like, "what value can we add to the consumer that no one else can?" and they quoted Sally Hogshead saying "different is better than better" as well as recommending a book 'Different' by Youngme Moon, that I've added to my reading list.
Robert shared a case study of a small financial services organisation, like Goldman Sachs but much smaller, with only 8 people on the team. They looked at the question about how they could offer value to their customers that no one else could. They decided that their 'why' was not to help their customers to be better investors, but to be better people.
~~~~~~~
Using Todoist
I keep waxing lyrical about Todoist for managing tasks and time and I am going to do so again following my holiday! One of the things I like about todoist is that it includes 'Labels' and 'Filter' functionality, which you can manipulate any time.
So, whilst we were away I added a 'tourist_office' label and then set my filters for 'Today's Urgent and Important' and 'Today's Routine Tasks' to not include those that had 'tourist_office' as a label and then when I was at the tourist office I just looked up all that tasks with that label. That way I could clear tasks on a list rather than having some hanging around until I'd made my daily trip to the tourist office, as they were now on a different list!
I've taken that off now I'm home of course but that sort of use of the labels and filters will come in useful again sometime, I'm sure. If you are of a 'neat' nature when managing your time you might like the tip too! And the tourist office was 20 minutes away so that also gave me an opportunity to tick off my daily walk task (yes, I am that sad!).
~~~~~~~
Balsamic Tomato Chicken with Basil
I love this recipe for Balsamic Tomato Chicken with Basil. Not cooked it for a while but was inspired to do it in France as I was cooking for 10 and it is very easy and tastes lush. Got it in a magazine many years ago; tracked down the book that it comes from and found out that individual recipes aren't considered copyright so here you go; a lovely recipe for you to try this week with a link on the page to the complete book! Let me know what you think.
It's a bit quiet in the house this week as Doddsy and Little Doddsy went off to a sailing event this morning. I will miss them but I'm already loving the peace and quiet ;-)
Did you miss me last week? It all got a bit hectic with the second week of our holiday and coming straight back into an event where I was speaking on both days in three separate sessions. I toyed with the idea of sending the newsletter late on Tuesday but that just didn't feel right, so here we are today, back on track, with me enjoying hiding in my office because it's too hot outside!
We've just got back from two weeks in Isle d'Oleron near La Rochelle in France. We were away with my parents in law, brother in law and his wife and their children so Little Doddsy had a lovely time as she's really close to the three boys. They're all older than her and really look after her (although she absolutely holds her own too - she's not a pushover!).
There were a few funny things to report. My sister in law is a native French speaker and the boys are all bilingual. We shared a chalet with Simon's Mum and Dad, which was next to theirs, and my youngest nephew came in one day to tell us that a French child had just given him the nod that "there's an English family in the chalet next to yours"! He didn't let on that he was with us and considers himself to be English as they live here!
And I think my most entertaining memory from the holiday is that Little Doddsy packed a separate planned outfit for each day we were there. And I know that because she labelled them all from 1-13! It didn't last long in practice but for the first few days we were all checking that she'd appeared in the right clothes, sticky labels still attached!
They all had sailing and windsurfing lessons, Simon and his brother sailed and windsurfered respectively and I...didn't! Wetsuits and water are required so even on a hot day I'm not keen! Having said that I had to come home a day early as I was speaking at the aforementioned event in London last weekend. I had to get a ferry from the island to La Rochelle to fly home and the weather was atrocious. I think there were more people out the back of the boat being sick than were sitting inside, as it was so rough!
~~~~~~~
Reader Contributions and Ideas
I love to get feedback and ideas from newsletter readers and I had a few following my last newsletter that I want to share with you too.
You may remember that last time I talked about the story I'd heard about 'mindfulness at the checkout' and about the tool 'focus@will' to help you to focus when you're working. Alan has a recommendation that he was reminded of that sort of combines the two. He went on a retreat with http://www.brahmakumaris.org/uk and they suggested a process called 'traffic control' where every hour, on the hour, for a few minutes you stop what you're doing and play relaxing music to 'centre yourself'. They all did it together on the retreat and he's continued it when working from home and found it really refreshing.
Drew said that the 'checkout' story reminded him of 'The Secret'. And Chris sent in a tip that if you use focus@will in two separate browers (e.g. Chrome and Firefox or on your laptop and on your smartphone) and play music in one and use the background cafe noise (creative beta) in the other, it facilitates major productivity! I guess the other option would be to go to a coffee shop and use headphones in one ear to play the music! Must give both a try.
Thank you for contributing guys; great to be able to share.
~~~~~~~~
Social Media Marketing Made Simple and in Less Time
Last week's blog took a bit of doing to get online as I was really struggling with the internet connectivity in France. My O2 phone was brilliant - their overseas deal is great. But I also went to the tourist office nearly every day to use theirs. It was really slow but at least allowed me to download and upload...until the last couple of days when I think they blocked my IP address as I could get onto the wifi on my phone but not via my laptop! I don't blame them. I was using it rather a lot ;-)
So, I managed to update the website via the WordPress app on my phone and then created my image using Canva (I can't remember if I've shared that as a resource before, but it is really cool) and uploaded it over the weekend between speaking and crewing.
It was actually a post that I originally wrote about 6 years ago on another site! As it relates to doing social media marketing in least time I thought it was still very useful for the site once I'd updated it (and I was on holiday so that was a quicker option than starting from scratch - a good tip for your own blogging!). So, I updated and republished it here: Social Media Marketing Made Simple and in Less Time.
~~~~~~~~
Social Media Mastery Made Simple
The event I was speaking at last weekend was about internet marketing, hosted by Tom Hua. My first two sessions were showing the audience how to use his upgraded package to sell ebooks online and then on the Sunday I did a session about using social media for marketing and they've also asked me to put together a webinar on the subject to run next week.
Whilst I was away I got much clearer about my market for POWER to Live More and given it's very much aimed at entrepreneurs and business owners who work from home, I've decided to include more social media stuff than I'd originally planned (under the topic of Productivity), so thinking the webinar might be of interest to you and hence I might do a special webinar just for newsletter subscribers. Let me know if it is of interest by hitting reply and I'll let you know more next week.
~~~~~~~~
What Value Can We Add that No One Else Can?
I was listening to the New Rainmaker with Brian Clark podcast this week and he was talking with Robert Rose of the Content Marketing Institute. They were talking about how important relationships and experiences are nowadays in product marketing for the large brands as well as for SMEs. It's something that I have always talked about with regards to social media, focusing on building on relationships and avoiding talking about anonymous marketing, which doesn't interest me. As you know I include my personality very much in my business!
They suggested that for differentiation we ask ourselves questions like, "what value can we add to the consumer that no one else can?" and they quoted Sally Hogshead saying "different is better than better" as well as recommending a book 'Different' by Youngme Moon, that I've added to my reading list.
Robert shared a case study of a small financial services organisation, like Goldman Sachs but much smaller, with only 8 people on the team. They looked at the question about how they could offer value to their customers that no one else could. They decided that their 'why' was not to help their customers to be better investors, but to be better people.
They started offering a book club for their customers and after a while started holding events where they invited poets and authors and entertainers for their customers to provide 'education' around areas other than finance. In the end when survey now about why their customers stay, their customers list the book club as the number one reason and the arts event as the number two reason! Clearly they are also
offering great investment advice but they've also created a whole new way of offering value to their customers, which is working really well for them - and their customers!
~~~~~~~
Using Todoist
I keep waxing lyrical about Todoist for managing tasks and time and I am going to do so again following my holiday! One of the things I like about todoist is that it includes 'Labels' and 'Filter' functionality, which you can manipulate any time.
So, whilst we were away I added a 'tourist_office' label and then set my filters for 'Today's Urgent and Important' and 'Today's Routine Tasks' to not include those that had 'tourist_office' as a label and then when I was at the tourist office I just looked up all that tasks with that label. That way I could clear tasks on a list rather than having some hanging around until I'd made my daily trip to the tourist office, as they were now on a different list!
I've taken that off now I'm home of course but that sort of use of the labels and filters will come in useful again sometime, I'm sure. If you are of a 'neat' nature when managing your time you might like the tip too! And the tourist office was 20 minutes away so that also gave me an opportunity to tick off my daily walk task (yes, I am that sad!).
~~~~~~~
Balsamic Tomato Chicken with Basil
I love this recipe for Balsamic Tomato Chicken with Basil. Not cooked it for a while but was inspired to do it in France as I was cooking for 10 and it is very easy and tastes lush. Got it in a magazine many years ago; tracked down the book that it comes from and found out that individual recipes aren't considered copyright so here you go; a lovely recipe for you to try this week with a link on the page to the complete book! Let me know what you think.
It's a bit quiet in the house this week as Doddsy and Little Doddsy went off to a sailing event this morning. I will miss them but I'm already loving the peace and quiet ;-)
Catch you next time
PS Don't forget to let me know if you'd be interested in the Social Media Mastery Made Simple webinar?