London - 17th February 2010 Nick Williams' Inspired Entrepreneurs' Club business partner, Niki Hignett, will be taking to the stage to de-construct the design principles behind their website which have enabled them to grow their database of prospects from 6,000 to nearly 20,000 names and e-mail addresses. Niki says "“You will leave this evening with a solid understanding of how to structure your website for maximum effectiveness, and a strategy for improving your results over time.” They are anticipating a sell-out and at the time of writing their are only 10 places remaining, so you probably want to book now.

Cardiff(ish) - 4th & 11th March 2010 Join me (Claire Raikes) for this 2 part 'hands on' workshop/course and discover how to simply and painlessly create an online presence, establish your ‘personal brand’, build your ‘tribe’ and ultimately increase your income using the internet and social media – all without feeling like you’re ’selling’ or being pushy. This 'Plain English' course has been designed especially for you if you KNOW there are huge opportunities to market your services online, but find it all a bit daunting/confusing/scary. You just want someone to explain how it all works and show you what to do. Spaces are limited to ensure plenty of un-rushed, individual attention, so book now for this event too. Full information here.

So 21 days into 2010 and already so much good stuff going on… On Wednesday night I joined the Inner Journey tribe for a Native American Indian New Year’s Fire Ceremony. Led by Jules Steinson, our animal spirit guides for the evening (mine was ‘the swan’) and The Great Spirit, we drummed and chanted and danced our way through an ancient ritual, culminating in our calling out to Great Spirit what was ‘to die’ and ‘be born’ in us. We sealed our intentions by setting fire to pieces of paper on which we’d written whatever words had come to us during the dance. The biggest gift of the evening for me was a chant which went, “Ground my body, water my blood, air my breath and fire my spirit.” Beautifully simple and totally uplifting. Ho!

The Inner Journey tribe is a spiritual group which meets every Wednesday night here in Penarth. I would love to post a link to their website here, but they don’t have one!! I know! BUT… they soon will, as Jules is one of the people who’ve been pestering me into running a workshop to show therapists, healers, earth angels and lightworkers how to simply and painlessly create an online presence, build your ‘tribe’ and ultimately increase your income using the internet and social media – all without feeling like you are selling or being pushy. I have finally set the date and booked the venue and am just finalising the agenda. Once that’s done, I’ll pop a page up here and invite you to book yourself on. There are only 10 spaces available so if you don’t want to miss out, subscribe to this blog feed to hear about it first. So the details so far are:

Workshop/Course Name: USING THE INTERNET TO NATURALLY GROW YOUR BUSINESS & TRIBE

Who should attend: Spiritual & Conscious Business Owners and Sole Traders,  Therapists, Healers, Earth Angels, Lightworkers, Sociopreneurs etc.  You KNOW there are huge, low- or no-cost opportunites to market your services online, but find it all a bit daunting/confusing/scary. You just need someone to explain how it all works and show you what to do – and you’d like them to speak Plain English and ideally, make it fun too! You may already have a website, but are left wondering how to get people to visit it and engage with you.

Course Format: 2 x 2 hour evening sessions. These are NOT dry, theory lessons which you attend in the hope of putting what you’ve learnt into practice in your own time. These are ‘hands-on’ practical sessions in front of a PC where you’ll be ‘learning by doing’, so by the time the course is over, you will have actually achieved started on your journey and will leave with a ‘road map’, confident that you know what you are doing to grow your business (and income!) naturally.

Times & Dates: Thursdays 4th & 11th February, both 5.30-7.30pm.

Location: Penarth Library, Stanwell Road, Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, CF64 2YT, UK

Any questions or requests? Use the comments facility below…

Long time no blog eh? Actually, I have been blogging, just not here. I have in fact got a new blog, an entirely new site actually, and I'm really enjoying blogging there - primarily because I don''t have to limit myself to writing about business blogging over there. I'm free to write about all sorts of thing which fascinate and interest me - I feel free to be me. The authentic me. Check it out, but be warned, the real me may be a very different 'me' from the 'me' you think you thunk I was. :) It's at www.ClaireRaikes.com

I now find myself with 2 blogs to update - not at all part of the plan so let me explain how it's going to work... I am going to continue blogging here, on bloggng and social media for business but all of those posts will also appear on my main blog over there. So... if you follow this blog purely for the blogging and social media content, then sit tight and do nothing. If however, you come here because you get a good vibe off me, we like the same things, you like my style etc, then I suggest you subscribe to the other one where you'll have much variety!  

So first post I'm re-appropriating from www.claireraikes.com is this one which I wrote earlier today. It's about a site called GratitudeLog.com. If you've not yet discovered it, it's a bit like Twitter, but instead of asking 'what are you doing?' it

asks, 'what are you grateful for today?' Answering this question daily is the quickest way to raise your vibrations and attract more of what you want into your life. I used to keep a little book by my bedside in which I'd write the same thing before I went to sleep, but somehow, I stopped doing it. This site has now replaced that habit for me. I don't do it every day, but they kindly send me an email if I haven't done it for a couple of days. Of course, you could just say what you're grateful for in Twitter, and in fact, Gratitude Log now allows you to post your updates straight to your Twitter feed. I don't do that - I'll explain why in a moment, but first, I want to share this Gratitude Log (Follow me!) button with you which I've just thrown together...

It's nothing fancy, but should look lovely on your blog or website and will attract new friends who also practice an 'attitude of gratitude'. To nab it for your own use, simply 'right click' on the image and select 'save image as' or 'save object as' (this will depend on your browser) and then save it to your computer. It's 240 pixels wide, so should work fine in most Wordpress themes.

But it's too big for most Typepad side column layouts, so here's a smaller version if that's you:

Not sure what to do next to display it and link to your Gratitude Log page?

Then using the search box feature, search for 'inserting image links in typelists' or 'inserting images in typelists". The instructions will have been written with Typepad users in mind, but the code itself is the same for Wordpress too (you just create a new Text Widget, whereas Typepadders create a 'Notes' type Typelist.) If you are still stuck, why not email me to book yourself in for a quick tutorial session. Depending on your tech wizardry skill level, 15 to 30 minutes should be ample time to teach you how. MORE INFO HERE

So my reason for not sending my Gratitude Log updates to Twitter...

I've been doing some serious thinking about BusinessBlogAngel the business and am now very clear about how I want it to develop and its actually not so much a 'growth' goal I have, as a 'values' goal. I'll explain that more in a follow up post shortly - but suffice to say, it's about letting my own personal brand really shine so I attract the clients and businesses I LOVE to work with.

I've been configuring some really very nice blogsites lately too - and motivating and enabling some brilliant people to tie their business blogging and social networking together with minimum effort for max results. I'll be sharing those with you shortly and if the interest is there, I'll be offering 'how to' instructional product/service as part of a tentatively planned membership club so you can do

 the same for yourself. 

Social media-y - I've been doing some lovely twitter backgrounds, have finally buried my hatchet with Facebook (again - that's for another day) and, by popular demand - as they say, I'll be running a 2 hour beginners workshop for Twitter here in Penarth for an invited group of conscious business peeps.

And finally - I've been exploring some of the many changes and developments with Typepad - some of which have been around for some time but which many of us were choosing to ignore - and others which are more recent. Again - I want to share some of this stuff with you too - I know not many of you for example have switched to the new 'comments' system - or maybe you did, but switched back because you had problems - either way - it's really worth doing now, and its not hard when someone shows you how. So that's all coming up in the next few weeks. 

My parents arrive tonight for a long weekend so there's supplies to shop for and some serious hoovering to be done! Although their beautiful master hoovered up just 2 days ago, the fur balls those 2 gorgeous creatures (photo) have left behind would fill a pillow I'm sure. :) Even so, would have them all back right now if it were an option. Roll on August. :)

As I explain in this video, it's nothing to do with paying and trials - it's all to do with the Compose Post view which that guest author sees and she can make the necessary changes herself really easily as shown here: