I’ll admit that when I first joined Twitter I didn’t have a clue what the #ff trend was all about, if you’re not sure this blog post will explain it for you. Switch back to this tab when you have read it and read on.

Image: Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.ne

There are millions of accounts on Twitter, some are deathly boring and don’t warrant following but there are a lot that are worth following for many reasons. I’ve previously written another ‘5 people you should be following on Twitter‘ post which covered 5 of the best accounts to keep you up to date with news, small business marketing and learning about Twitter. Here are 5 more (6 if you count @rsbookkeeping) that are great people/businesses to follow and the reason(s) why.

1. Jo Harrison – Jo is a Virtual Assistant and provides lots of tips via her blog and tweets about improving your admin, social media management, document formatting, blog management and SEO copywriting.
2. Kapil Karpur – Filemaker, spreadsheet developer and networking expert. Kaps helps to put people in contact with each other whilst providing networking tips on his blog.
3. Angie Aspinall – I’ve only recently started following Angie, but she has been instrumental in creating the weekly online twitter networking event #yorkshirehour. Follow her to keep up to date with all things Yorkshire.
4. James Debono – James tweets free advice on marketing your small business and blog. Well worth following if you want to improve your blog.
5. EosGrafx – If you want to improve your website follow this account and read the blog posts, they include masses of information.

That’s all for this Friday. There are many people who didn’t make this list, why not suggest some more below?

A few month’s ago I took part in the Ultimate Blog Challenge, the aim of which was to post 30 blogs in 30 days. I’m happy to say that I managed to do this, so during April I will be taking part in the challenge once again.

Armed with a fresh set of blog ideas and daily emails offering tips and advice, I’ll be posted one blog per day to give you advice on guidance for your small business.

To make sure that you don’t miss a post follow me on Twitter, Facebook or subscribe to my RSS feed at the top of this page.

If you find any of the posts useful or interesting, please comment and/or tell your followers about it by ‘Sharing The Knowledge’

Blogging is fun, a great way to increase your search engine rankings and also a direct line of communication between you and your visitors. In recent years I’ve seen more and more small businesses turn to blogging to help get across the services they sell and expertise which they want to share. But how can you keep people who stumble across your blog coming back time after time?

• Blog consistently. It doesn’t have to be every day but don’t blog every day for a week and then nothing for 2 months. Set a target for when you are going to write a blog post and stick to it. If you have more than one idea at the same time write the posts and then schedule when they are uploaded onto your website.
• Relevant content: If it’s not relevant to your website/business does it have a place on your blog? There will always be exceptions to the rule, but if you’re a builder people won’t come to you for advice on flower arranging! I work with and for small businesses, which means nearly all of my content is geared towards that field.
• Comment. Take time to read other people’s blogs, comment on posts and share those posts with your readers. Engaging with other people will help promote you and your blog.
• Analyse. If you are using a WordPress blog install the Jetpack plugin; this lets you see which posts people are viewing. Another tool to install is Google Analytics which is also useful. By analysing your blog posts you are able to see which topics people view most. This helps keep your blog content good.
• Promote it! When you publish a post don’t just do it on your blog, shout about it to the world on Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and any other social networking sites you are a member of. Also make sure to include an RSS feed built into your blog to allow people to subscribe to it and be alerted to a new post. Subscribe to mine at the top of this post.

If you have any great ways to keep people coming back to your blog, post them below and include a link to your blog

Another week has flown past, and whilst I’ve not published as many blogs as previous weeks, the old posts are still proving to be popular. Below are the 3 most viewed blog posts over the last 7 days:

• How Much Money Do I Need To Start My Own Business? – This one is always top-of-the-shop
• Take Time to Relax – You’ll feel much better for it
• 5 Great Blogs to Follow – I hope that you take my advice and follow them

As ever, if there are any small business related issues you would like me to blog about please let me know

Over the last month I have been taking part in a blogging challenge to make a blog post every day for a month. There were days when this was easy to do and others where it was a little harder due to my work load of lack of ideas. Thankfully I managed to complete the challenge and I think that I managed to keep the content interesting enough for people to keep coming back – my site traffic stats seem to indicate that.

During the month there have also been lots of other people who have taken part in the challenge, below are links to the top 5 blogs that I have enjoyed reading during January (in no particular order):

1. Writers Block Admin Services – Jo is a virtual PA and very friendly
2. EosGrafx – Web design services
3. James Debono - Big Thinking Online
4. Michelle Shaeffer – Fantastic site for blog ideas
5. Networking Goat – A new blog but has some good advice

If you took part in the Ultimate Blog Challenge which were the blogs that you enjoyed reading the most?

Where did May go? The month seemed to fly by. If you have missed any of my blogs during the month, below are a selection of some of the more popular posts.

• If you are thinking about using WordPress for your website, check out this short wordpress set up tutorial
• If you want to maximise Twitter within your business, you  really should buy Twitter Your Business by Mark Shaw
• Keeping organised is incredibly important in business, none more so that in small businesses. Read my 3 part blog starting here. Parts 2 & 3 can be linked to via Part 1
• Mark Shaw has created a bit of noise recently on Twitter thanks to his ‘Requests for Recommendations’ scheme. Read my interview with Mark Shaw to gain a better insight into #rfr

As ever, if you have any thoughts or comments please let me know…

As the title says, welcome to RS Book-Keeping’s new website. Whilst the layout is a lot different compared to the previous website, it is a lot more user friendly and will enable me to integrate my blog and keep it up to date much more easily.