I first heard the term “mastermind group” in the very early stages of running a business, before I’d actually registered the name Strawberry Communications. Then I assumed it was beyond my capacities as a business owner (I hadn’t even realised I was running a business at that point), but I’ve since discovered the incredible value of having one – or more – mastermind groups to help drive my business.

Business leaders from around the world use mastermind groups to help them focus their efforts, plus draw on others’ knowledge, resources, energy and networks. The groups are made up of 5-8 like-minded people who are at a similar level in business.

I have been a member of an international mastermind group for two years now and we meet online monthly. I’ve also recently joined a group that meets in Launceston every month and we call ourselves Motivational Minds. While both groups share similar formats by giving each member time to discuss an issue they need help with and then setting goals for the month ahead, they are also different in that the international group has members from different cultures and time zones whom I have never met in person, adding a new dimension to the idea of looking at something with fresh eyes, whereas the local group meets in person so we have visual cues and I know the members.

Here are the goals I set when starting with Motivational Minds:

What is your intention for being part of the group/what are you hoping to bring to the group?

I want to be inspired by a group of like-minded business owners who can help push me to achieve my goals and provide alternatives when I need advice, plus I want to contribute to mind growth for all members.

What are you hoping to gain from the group?

Inspiration, motivation and my conscience.

What are the three top challenges/issues you are currently facing in your business?

Time management, handling growth and systemising.

Do you have a personal goal you’d like to work on achieving alongside your business goals?

Writing my book!

I am already working to achieve these goals and find having a group of people who ask me for monthly updates, along with business mentors, keeps me accountable and encourages me to keep chipping away at the tasks to get the results I want.

One of my business friends, Janet Beckers, is a member of several mastermind groups and shares her experiences about one that meets annually, like a board of directors, here.

Are you a member of a mastermind group? How does it work for you?

Finding Readers

• Be personal, authentic, quirky and easily accessible

• Leave comments on other blogs

• Use other social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to promote your blog and connect with readers

• Use original content

• Interview others in your niche

• Use great photos, preferably taken by you

Productivity

• Batch write

• Find content from reader questions, emails, comments and key words

• Look at Google Analytics to work out where to concentrate your efforts

Content Creation

• Have a strategy around content

• Do a content brainstorm and then survey readers to work out popular topics

• Take extra time to unpack the problem

Tim Ferris’ Tips (author of 4-Hour Work Week and 4-Hour Body)

• Do multi-platform content launches

• Find what’s best for you when blogging

• Concentrate on one good post a week

• Readers need to trust the messenger before they will trust the message

• If you’re trying to find great teachers, comment on their personal blogs, not their main blogs to get their attention

• Develop and define a very clear picture of what success looks like for you in three years, based on where you’re at now

What are your tips for writing compelling blog posts?

Suellen will share the five keys to starting your own successful business and show you how to avoid common start-up mistakes during the webinar between 12:15pm and 1pm (Australia, EST).

She will explain:

1. The key to leaving a job you hate and instead earn an income doing something you love, on your own terms

2. The mistake that stops you making a name for yourself in your chosen area and being able to charge what you’re worth

3. The actions that cause you to waste time and money on things that just don’t matter, instead of focusing on what matters most

4. The one big pitfall that leads to hours and hours of wasted time, but with no dollars in return for your efforts.

5. The big frustration that slows your progress, leads to burnout and causes 95 per cent of business start-ups to fail within five years.

Suellen’s online bootcamp will take you step-by-step through starting your own business in just 60 days.

To register for your place, click this link: http://www.transforme.com.au/events

The webinar will be repeated at different times, so register to find a time that best suits your schedule.

I can see the value of systemising not just tasks within my business, but many aspects of my life, so here is my list of time management tips (some of which I am better at than others).

• Mark all appointments in my own and the family diary/calendar to stop trying to remember everything weeks down the track
• Start my own card distribution service so I don’t miss family and friends’ birthdays and can show clients how much I appreciate them
• Produce business systems for my most-used tasks so I can pass them on to my virtual helpers
• Take advantage of small pockets of time by doing one task that will take exactly that long, instead of getting lost in checking emails or losing hours on social media
• Prioritise tasks to be completed each day – and be realistic
• Develop an ideal week including client and business days (this is still a work in progress for me)
• Batching by completing similar tasks at the same time. Read more about this at Alycia Edgar’s blog
• Setting my annual goals, breaking them down into monthly tasks and then producing a daily/weekly checklist to make sure they get done
• Giving myself time out. I’ve spent too long recently holed up in the office doing all of this and not getting out breathing the fresh air or just experiencing the life I’m working so hard for. So I’m making sure I go for walks, drinking good coffee in some of Launceston’s great cafes and enjoying cuddles with my family. It helps to recharge and do it all again!

My list is by no means a definitive answer to managing time effectively, but these are things that work for me. I’d love to hear what works for you.

People from all over the world log their locations, tips and impressions of businesses on foursquare every day, so is this something you should ignore?

Yes, there are game elements where you can become the mayor if you visit a location more than others, unlock badges based on your entries and earn points, but there is much more to foursquare than these fun elements.

Retail businesses can get the most from this social media platform by registering their business location, offering specials for foursquare users (and maybe an extra special for the mayor – encouraging more visits to see if the current mayor can be toppled) who check in, or near, your venue and you can follow customer traffic via your foursquare dashboard.

If you run an online business or work from a location you don’t want to make public (like your home), you can still use foursquare to connect with your customers via foursquare Custom Badges and Pages where you can add tips and little bites of information about your brand.

Last year clever business owner Angela Vithoulkas of VIVO Cafe Group hosted the world’s first Café Swarm, where almost 80 foursquare users checked in to the café in a three-hour period and received an exclusive Swarm badge. Find out more about the Swarm at the VIVO blog.

My tips for using foursquare for business are:

• Register your brand so you have a foursquare presence
• Offer customers a special deal to encourage them to visit yours over other venues
• Have some fun with the platform
• Use people’s comments as market research to see what you do well and where you need to improve

Remember, if you haven’t registered your venue, a customer may have already done it for you, so log in and see what they have said.

It’s easy enough to set up a Facebook page for a business, but how do you make your page irresistible so it becomes a hub for your brand’s online activity?

I’ve come across a step-by-step video tutorial that shows you exactly how customise your Facebook page, including the wall banner and Welcome tab you often see on well-designed pages.

Check out the Create Your Own Custom Facebook Pages course here: http://bit.ly/dnDBvZ. It has been designed by the very clever Leigh Kostiainen.

For the next 48 hours only this course is available to my friends for $19.95. After 10.59am AEST on Thursday (October 5) it goes back to its standard price of $47.

If you want to go one step further than the average Facebook business page, invest this tutorial package now: http://bit.ly/dnDBvZ.

It was also a day of inspiration. I picked up lots of points to take away and act on as soon as I walked back into the office, so I thought I might share some from my favourite presenters with you.

Julia Bickerstaff – The Business Bakery: have big, hairy, audacious goals for your business – and make them happen!

Tim Reid – Small Business, Big Marketing: be clear about your business personality and how that affects prospective customers.

Ben Angel – Industry Domination Insights: is your business Coke or Pepsi? Who doesn’t want to be the market leader?

You might already have a handle on using Twitter and Facebook, but LinkedIn is fast becoming THE place to be for business owners because it offers so many different ways to connect.

Once thought of as just an online CV site, LinkedIn now has more than 65 million users worldwide. But there is more to this social media application than just a place to look up contacts. Many users find work, sell their products and services and grow their business by expanding their networks.

The first step is to fill in your profile completely so anyone who looks you up or finds your profile in a search can see everything you have to offer. This also works on the flipside, by researching prospects or staff before meeting them.

A great way for your connections to see how you operate is to ask happy clients to write testimonials via LinkedIn. Equally, you can return the favour by writing valuable recommendations for your contacts.

Other ways LinkedIn can help your business:

• Conduct your own market research within your network
• Answer questions to show your expertise
• Post job listings to find the right talent
• Join groups related to your industry to expand your network and build knowledge
• Display examples of your work or presentations using SlideShare
• Share useful articles and resources
• Search for new contacts by company, industry and city, or ask your existing connections to introduce you to their networks
• Check your connections’ locations and use TripIt so you can meet up when travelling for business
• Gain new website visitors or newsletter subscribers by including links in your profile

Integrate other social media applications, such as importing contacts, adding blogs, like Posterous, and your Twitter stream so people can connect with you in different places for different purposes.

LinkedIn’s Twitter application has recently been upgraded to include Overview, Connections, My Tweets and Settings features. Now you can see what your friends are tweeting, who you follow (including suggesting LinkedIn connections to follow) and you can tweet direct from LinkedIn. You can also save your LinkedIn connections as a Twitter list.

Include your LinkedIn URL, along with other online applications, on all your marketing collateral such as business cards, email signature, email newsletters and websites so contacts can connect with you in their chosen way/s.

So if you haven’t already, join LinkedIn and start making connections. Make sure you add me: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johannabakerdowdell

If there have ever been any doubts that we live in the information age, the report released by the University of California in mid January proves those wrong. The study, called How Much Information, found American households consume 34 gigabytes, equivalent to 100,000 words, a day. I have a fairly voracious appetite for words, but I would never have put the figure that high.

The words come from a host of sources, which, in order of prominence, are: TV, computer, radio, print media, phone, computer games, recorded music and movies. So our eyes and ears see and hear 100,000 words from these sources in a 24-hour period. The study found this amounted to 11.8 hours of time spent on information consumption a day. Between 1980 and 2008, the number of bytes consumed has increased six per cent each year, adding up to a 350 per cent increase over that time, the researchers said.

If humans have such a healthy appetite for words, it has to be said the words chosen to promote your business and build your brand must be selected carefully. If your newsletter has to stand out amongst many thousands of words, those 500 or so words in your newsletter, for instance, have to be the right words. They must make an impact.

Use carefully-constructed marketing that conveys the same message throughout all forms of communication, from your website and signage, to your brochures and business cards.

For more information about the University of California report visit http://hmi.ucsd.edu/howmuchinfo.php

I recently entered Strawberry Communications in two awards programs – the Business Women Connect Central Coast Business Women’s Awards and the 2009 Business Achiever Awards. I am proud to say Strawberry Communications is a finalist in the Professional Services category of the latter.

In the process of entering and making submissions for these awards, I learnt a lot about myself as a business person and a woman with aspirations. Without being forced to put my goals, achievements and plans for my business into words I might not have realised how far I am have come in the four years I have been a soloist.

As hard as it is to admit, especially to a potential audience of so many, I had to Google myself (is that called “weegle”?) to find out everything I have done. The process jogged my memory and helped me clarify my successes, which include speaking as an expert in social media and small business promotion, contributing to several books, becoming a professional blogger, writing for Flying Solo and publishing my own eBook.

So, even though it took many hours of my time and I wondered several times why I had agreed to enter these awards, here is what I gained from the process:
•    I clarified my short- and long-term business and personal goals
•    I looked back at my achievements over the past four years
•    I can now explain with conviction why I am worthy of receiving an award
•    I am very clear on my point of difference from my competitors
•    I can relate examples of where I, as a business owner, have excelled in customer service, leadership and communication
•    I have a better understanding of the relationships I have built with clients and the media
•    I revisited the system I use to retain existing customers and attract new ones
•    I looked closer at my financial position to see how the business has improved year-on-year
•    I isolated areas of my business that needed work
•    I discovered the process is a good excuse to market Strawberry Communications because these awards recognise the value of my business and add credibility to my brand.

So even if Strawberry Communications finishes 2009 as a finalist in the Business Achiever Awards only, as a business owner I have gained more than any trophy or prize is worth. Wish me luck though!

Can you say you have the same clarity about these areas in your business? It might be worth spending some time looking at your business goals, unique selling proposition (USP), past achievements and areas in your business that could do with some extra focus. It is a valuable exercise.