Over the last 30 days I have been taking part in the Ultimate Blog Challenge, where the challenge is to make an average of 1 post per day over the course of the month. As far as I can tell I completed the challenge and learnt a lot of new tips along the way about blogging.

Image: vichie81 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Below are 5 of the most popular posts from the last 30 days:

• You Are What You Tweet
• How Much Money Do I Need to Start My Own Business?
• 5 People You Should Be Following on Twitter
• 7 Tips to Balance Your Personal and Professional Life
• 5 Social Media Pet Peeves

Thank you to everyone who has viewed/commented on my blogs over the last 30 days. I hope that you continue to come back and read the blog (hint: subscribe to the RSS feed )

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?

Over the last year I have taken part in a few blog challenges, during the course of which I have discovered some great blogs. Below I have listed the 3 blogs which I think you should be reading/following as they are updated with fresh content on a regular basis and are interesting to read from a small business perspective.

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

• Networking Goat – A new blog by Kapil (Kaps) Karpur. Kaps main business is building databases and spreadsheets, but on this blog he shares his networking experiences and advice.
• Writers Block Admin Services – Jo is based in France and regularly updates her blog with great content about social media, ebooks and he VA services
• James Debono – James blogs with lots of tips for small businesses to get the most out of social media and the internet for small businesses.

To keep up to date with each of these blogs I have added them to by Google Reader feed, you should do the same too.

Your Turn…

Which blogs have you enjoyed reading over the last few weeks?

Another busy week on the blog; here are the top 3 most viewed posts over the last 7 days:

Image: Just2shutter / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

• Look How Much #yorkshirehour has grown – This is an infographic showing how popular a weekly online networking event has become
• Do I Need To Complete A Tax Return? – Self employed people in the UK started to get their 2011/12 tax returns this week. Do you need to complete one?
• Top Tips For Keeping Your Business Records Organised – A must read if you are thinking of starting your own business

Have a read of each one and if you like it please let me know by way of a comment or sharing the post on Twitter, Facebook etc…

 

I’ve been using the visual.ly webpage quite a lot lately to create some infographics; below is one called ‘You Are What You Tweet’ which has been generated for my Twitter feed, how does yours compare?

 

Over the past few months I have made a lot of blog posts giving tips and advice for small businesses. Below are the 3 posts (in no particular order) which have received the most comments. Have a read through them and let me know what you think.

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• 3 Reasons you shouldn’t put off filing your tax return – Quite a topical one considering the UK Tax Year has just ended
• How much money do I need to start my own business? – Always the most visited post throughout the week
• 5 Social Media Pet Peeves – This is a recent post, but seems to have got people talking

If you’ve read a post on the blog recently that you have liked, please let me know by way of a comment/retweet. Based on the comments/tweets I will be able to tailor more posts to suit your interested

 

It’s been a busy 7 days on the blog as I have started to take part in the my 2nd Ultimate Blog Challenge. Below are the top posts over the last week (by viewer count):

Image: Just2shutter / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

1. 5 Social Media Pet Peeves – The ugly side of social media
2. How Much Money Do I Need To Start My Own Business? – Since I made this post it has regularly topped the most viewed list, find out why..
3. When Does the UK Tax Year End – It came and went last week, but read here so you know for next year

Over to you

If you’ve read or commented on my blogs this week, which one have you thought was the best? By letting me know I can tailor the content to make it more relevant to you

After a long time thinking about it I’ve finally taken the plunge and given RS Bookkeeping a Facebook page. Please head on over to the page – here – and ‘like’ it (if you do!).

I’ve also added the ‘Like’ button to my blog posts to make it even easier to share them with your friends and followers.

If you spot anything wrong with the Facebook page, or have any tips on how to make it better please let me know.

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

On Wednesday I had finished work for the evening and was about to log-off to watch the TV for the night when I saw a tweet from a small business I follow that they were about to join in with #yorkshirehour. I wondered what is was all about so loaded up Twitter and searched for the hashtag – surely anything had to be better than watching the soaps my wife had recorded!

#yorkshirehour turned out to be a fantastic hour where lots of businesses in the region were all chatting and networking with each other in the same place at the same time.  The hour (8pm-9pm) flew by and I saw a message later that there had been over 800 tweets that hour with the #yorkshirehour hashtag.

I came across many businesses and people who I had not known about before, and hopefully they thought they same when they saw me. In many ways it was surprising to see so many small businesses online at the same time, but it was great to meet so many new people and businesses.

If you run a business in Yorkshire, pop on over to the next #yorkshirehour on Wednesday 8pm-9pm