6 New Year’s Resolutions for a successful 2012
So the year has settled in – too quickly for our liking – and no doubt you’ve already broken all those resolutions you made on December 31st. So we thought two weeks in would make a time to set some more resolutions to keep this year and some that are more business specific and designed to make your business more successful in 2012. So here’s six from us: 1 Make contact with an old client Don’t do the hard sell, just see what they are up to and say hello. It may come to nothing but in two, three even six months time when they need some help or perhaps somebody they know needs help of the kind you can supply, you are more likely to feature in their thoughts. 2 Only hold meetings when needed Not every problem deserves a meeting and far too often not every meeting deserves a meeting. So be strong, be realistic and ditch the meetings that you know aren’t likely to move anything on. Calling a meeting to solve a problem is the easy way out, solving it is the hardest bit. Instead of all that wasted time to create space for a meeting, spend the time productively trying to solve the problem. 3 Re-tweet two articles per day Not only will it help your own Twitter presence and following – although only if it is relevant and interesting information you are retweeting – but it will also encourage you to read a bit more and widen your own knowledge. 4 Join a new business group or networking organisation This could be signing up to a trade or industry organisation or it could just be signing up to an online group such as the many thriving on LinkedIn. It is a great way of keeping up with the buzz in your industry but also of making new contacts who you can bounce ideas off of or learn from. 5 Learn when to move on If a project keeps stalling or a product just isn’t moving, stop and take a step back. Putting more and more effort into solving the issues may be making it more diffuclt for you to see the whole picture. If you can put it on hold, or pass it to a colleague. A fresh set of eyes can be the fastest way to solving consistent stumbling blocks and more effective and efficient in the long run. 6 Manage your finances better Invest in a suitable accounts package and put it in the hands of somebody suitably qualified to use it. Then make the most of it. As well as tracking all the ins and outs – make sure you chase invoices as they become overdue – us it to plan properly too. Look at cashflow and projections and flag up early any potential issues. That’s just six from us what are your resolutions?
Ifttt may make your life easier
The home page for IFTT simply reads: “Put the internet to work for you” It’s so simple, you think somebody must have invented this before, but to be honest this is the first time we’ve come across IFTT or any of its ilk and we love it. So what is IFTT? Well IFTT stands for “If This Then That”. In programming terms its the very basic function that makes the internet, applications, operating systems and the like, all work. Now with the help of APIs and some clever tweaks it is being put to use on the internet and internet driven applications. So if everytime you take a photo with your phone app you want it published to Twitter and stored in your online drive you can. The very steps that might take you an hour to manually complete, you can automate within seconds. You just use IFTT to set up the triggers and hey presto no more worrying about human error meaning a missed-out step. It is all based around tasks, triggers and actions. Simply choose the channel – Facebook, Google Calendar, etc and follow the step-by-step instructions. You can turn actions on or off, edit them or delete them. Yet its value is in the fact that if you set it up once correctly, you may never need to worry again, you can automate the ‘knock-on’ actions. You’ve probably been using similar tools without knowing. Plug-ins that automatically tweet your latest blog, automating Facebook comments to be tweeted etc. Yet IFTTT goes even further. You can even include the weather. We’ve just set-up an auto-tweet to send out a message to our followers when the weather is predicted to drop below 5 degrees C. So like other tools you can schedule your tweets but with IFTTT that needn’t be based on time, it can be based on various other conditions. What’s more you don’t need a smartphone to use it, just a plain, simple browser. We are only just getting to grips with IFTTT ourselves but what we’ve seen so far we love. We’re sure there will be many clones to follow. Life just got easier. Have you used IFTTT? Can you recommend anything similar?