Today there is silence for the first time in weeks, the children (and hubby) are back to work and I have the house to myself – bliss!! However – I also have a massive ‘to do’ list – both for work and for home – so where do I start? 

Following on from the ‘3-6pm No laptop Challenge’ of last year (which now needs to include ‘and no Blackberry’ as well) I am setting myself some new ‘working guidelines’ in an attempt to get organised, be productive in ‘work hours’ and generally keep everything balancing  - including myself!

1. Start ‘work’ at 10am each day – use the time before to catch up on ‘house’ related jobs so they don’t mount up

2. Don’t be distracted by emails – plan 2/3 slots a day to answer them and ignore at other times.

3. Prioritise work tasks for each day – including all the ones I want to avoid!

4. Stop for lunch for at least 1/2 an hour

5. Don’t feel guilty if I don’t get everything done – I am not superwoman!

What are your plans for the ‘new term’ ? Have you got a schedule or a top tip to share?

Popularity: 5% [?]

A couple of months ago we teamed up with Dream Town and gave away a Rose Petal Cottage in one of our Freebie Friday giveaways. At the same time, I was asked if my girls would like to review their new pet inspired property, Puppy Lane Cottage, which we were thrilled to accept.

The perfect place for a little girl to look after all her pets, Puppy Lane Cottage comes complete with Candyfloss, a very fluffy puppy, plus a Kennel, Collar Tag and Lead, Brush, Bowl and Bone. We were also sent another accessory pack including Coco the Kitten, plus a fabric covered Sofa and pet accessories.

Further pets and accessories are available including a Kitchen Set which comes with Pip the Mouse who lives in the cooker and a fabric Garden with Nutmeg the Bunny and gardening accessories.

Asthetically the Puppy Lane Cottage is very pretty, and the attention to detail is really beautiful. A stone cottage, with thatched roof, a picket fence, flowers  creeping up the walls and even a butterfly settled on the roof, all makes for the ultimate girlie hideaway. The cottage also has a stable-style door with magnetic clasps, pretty curtains and lace edging around the roof.  So if you have a real girlie-girl as a daughter, she won’t fail to fall in love with this playhouse.

From a mum’s point of view, the cottage was simple to assemble and the instructions were very clear. The frame of the cottage is made from plastic poles, meaning the house is lightweight to move around, and when not in use can quickly be broken down and stored back in the box. But if you don’t want to disassemble the cottage, you can store one half of the cottage neatly inside the other slightly larger half, stacking the accessories inside.

My girls loved playing in the cottage, but what really made it for them were the pets. They fell in love with Coco and Candyfloss and loved playing with them and all their accessories, quickly announcing that they wanted Nutmeg the rabbit and Pip the mouse too!

So, if you’re thinking ahead to Christmas already, and have a very girlie daughter who loves animals, you won’t go far wrong by asking Father Christmas to bring her a Puppy Lane Cottage on 25th December!

For stockist details and more information on the complete Dream Town range, call 0800 389 8591 or visit www.worldsapart.com

Visit the Dream Town Club – www.dreamtown.co.uk – for exclusive games, downloads and chances to win!

Popularity: 10% [?]

Yesterday it was confirmed by Mark Prisk, the business and enterprise minister, that Business Link is to be shut down.

“The regional Business Links have spent too much time signposting and not enough time actually advising,” Mark Prisk told Real Business yesterday. “We’re going to wind down the Regional Development Agencies, and as part of those, we’ll be winding down the regional Business Link contracts.”

To replace the current Business Link service, Mark Prisk proposed a two-pronged approach, led by a state-funded online service and the private sector. “We can deliver a lot more online and make better use of the private providers. The vast majority of private businesses don’t use public services [for advice]. We need a 21^st century approach to business support.”

In the early days of our business we took advantage of the Business Link voucher scheme and benefitted from several hours free business advice from WENTA, one of our local providers in Business Link’s brokerage service. At the time there was no way we could have paid for expert business advice, so this was a great help. But other experiences left us feeling that Business Link itself was just a huge beaurocratic organisation, with other smaller companies generally providing the service or the advice.

The best thing about Business Link for me was their website – and the worst was being passed from pillar to post, with no-one wanting to take ownership of a query and merely passing it on to another region or agency. At times the Business Link ’machine’ just seemed too big and out of touch with its customers. The free courses they ran were good but unless you were a complete start-up were often of little or no use. A year into trading and there wasn’t a single course that was suitable for our level of experience,  that we would be likely to gain much from.

Personally I think the decision to axe Business Link is a positive one. There are plenty of excellent private service providers who will benefit from the opportunity to tender for contracts previsously overseen by Business Link, and having more providers will generate competition and hopefully a higher standard of support and advice for new and growing businesses.

What is your experience of Business Link?  Has your business benefitted from advice, funding or courses?  Would your business be operating without them or have their services completely passed you by? We’d love to hear your experiences.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Carly at Mummy’s Shoes has come up with a fab idea of everyone introducing themselves if they are going to CyberMummy in July.  Now as some of you will know,  Mum’s the Boss is a double-act, and whilst you will probably find us together, here are our individual details, just in case we get separated.

NB. We will each be wearing a badge saying ‘If found please return to Sam/Helen *delete as applicable*’

Name:   Sam
Blog:   Mum’s The Blog (www.mumstheblog.co.uk) & Keep Calm Eat Cake (http://keepcalmeatcake.blogspot.com)
Twitter ID:   @mumstheboss & @ownselfbetrue
Height:   5ft 9
Weight: Bit chunkier than I would like (see Likes below)
Hair:   Brown bob with blond highlights
Eyes:   Brown, normally framed with specs
Likes:   Cake (baking & eating), chocolate, Stephen Fry, wine, eating out, gardening, reading, Glee, going to the theatre, Twilight, drinking tea, making people smile

I was planning to wear my maxi dress to Cybermummy but now everyone else seems to be wearing one too, I’m not so sure (plus it makes me look a bit matronly!). So the jury is still out on the outfit – but shorts, hot pants or skinny jeans it will NOT be!

Name:   Helen
Blog:   Mum’s The Blog (www.mumstheblog.co.uk)
Twitter ID:   @mumstheboss
Height:   short (shorter than Sam anyway)
Hair:   clean and brushed
Eyes:   2 – brown
Likes:   cake, wine, Johnny Depp, talking with friends, laughing, reading books and sunshine. 

We’re really looking forward to meeting up with old friends and finally putting faces to all the Twitter names we chat to! See you on the 3rd

Popularity: 8% [?]

So, you’ve got a blog. But you don’t know wat to write about or you’ve run out of steam. Here Natalie Lue explains how to keep your blog populated with regular content so it keeps working hard for you and your business.

I talk to mums in business all the time who are either considering starting a blog but are not sure what to write about, or have started a blog and have run out of things to write about. The first situation comes about because every Tom, Dick and Harry is saying variations of how if you’re in business you should have a blog. Maybe you’ve seen others including your competitors doing it and think ‘Ooh I want a piece of the action’ or maybe someone’s told you it’s great for SEO. You’re now stuck in the indecisive, self-doubt, plenty of analysing stage feeling like you should do something but are not personally convinced, or you’re time poor, struggling to wear all your hats and dropping a lot of balls, and wondering if you can squeeze in another one.

Or…you’ve started a blog, had a burst of energy, and then run out of steam. Either way, you have a blog with no content or energy.

Quickly getting past the whole issue of whether you should have a blog or not, I always say to people to create your own personal business case for doing so. It’s different strokes for different folks, so while I do believe that if you truly want to have a strong online presence for your business, create a brand, and a be an authority on your niche that blogging is a must; if you have to drag yourself there kicking and screaming, or you get there and then lose sight of why you started and it becomes like Yet Another Chore, what is the point?

Blogging is part of your marketing activity and even if you pooh pooh marketing, everybody needs it and has to do it to a certain extent, so it’s important that if you actually want to grow your business, that get behind your decisions otherwise you’ll undermine them.

Planning ahead is key as well as managing your expectations so that you don’t have too inflated ideas about what the blog is supposed to do.

What do you need to plan? What you’ll write and how often you’ll do it

In terms of what content you will use on your blog, there’s the obvious stuff and then there’s the ‘thinking outside the box’ stuff. If you do both, your blog will stand out as opposed to looking like ‘just another business getting in on the blogging action’.

The obvious stuff

Your take on news related to your business/market. Make it original and informative – it’s your view, although avoid taking up the high horse/lecturing position.

Provide how to’s/patterns/downloadable PDF’s/recipes/link to great resources etc. A fantastic way to add serious value to your blog, people love finding solutions to problems, or just feeling like they gained something.

Tips & advice on how to get the best of out relevant products. A very good example of this is over at Milly Bee where Camilla sells affordable artwork and has put together a really useful page on where to buy frames.

Inspiring pictures. Photos of your product in use or someone using your service. Photos of them in unusual settings can be thought provoking and humourous.

Run a poll or survey and report your findings. Works as a great piece of pr that you could use to get press coverage elsewhere although every poll/survey needs respondents.

Post genuine customer stories. Don’t go down the informercial route as people will get weirded out, but posting feedback with pictures/video is great.

Video. An increasing number of businesses and bloggers use video. Quick snippets of your customers using your products, talking about your business, staff demoing stuff, show how something is made and give it some backing music and speed it up.

Remember! If you are on multiple platforms – for instance blog, Facebook, Twitter – you need to vary it up a bit because there is no ‘incentive’ for someone to follow you on all of these if you’re going to repeat the same information.

Eek, but seriously, what do people write about?! Here’s an example of brainstorming ideas

All of the above and more. I met Bisola from Kiddiesplaybus at the recent Mums The Boss monthly networking event. She throws parties in a specially kitted out soft play bus and had wondered about what to post on her blog. Off the top of my head I’m thinking:

Videos of excited kids at the party with little snippets act as great testimonials and also give a far stronger impression of the fun factor. Aside from mentioning news about the business, featuring stuff like the iPhone app ‘The Wheels On The Bus’, pictures of bus cakes, inspiring pics of the bus decorated in various ways, maybe staging a few scenes of teddy bears and dolls having their own sneaky tea party, other cool bus products, links to bus themed evites for the party or a template to customise and print out for party invitations, and tips for making the day less stressful are just some of the things that would work on the blog.

You don’t need to update your blog every day but find a general rhythm and try to stick to it, although don’t beat yourself about the head if you don’t. Start with saying you’ll update once a week or fortnightly, and even write in bulk and schedule ahead. Set aside an hour, bash out a few blog posts, and schedule them.

Keep a note of ideas so that if you don’t have time to write them straight away, you have your ideas ready to hand.

And remember, you don’t need to write an essay – pictures with a few sentences work really well. If you write a post and it’s really long, split it into a couple of posts – bingo, you have more content!

Popularity: 6% [?]