Business Leads UK

New Mindset Business Consultants
IML Sports Marketing
Connect Reading
Selling Sciences
Mary Flavelle
Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Group
JazzMouse Productions Limited
Business in Bracknell
Hotel Marketing Association
BML Solutions Limited
RUN PRINT RUN

I got in contact with Amy last year as we were entering into our busiest period. What started as a tentative ‘toe-in-the-water’ has now become an essential service for Jazzmouse. Here’s what Amy has to say.
Paul Fawcus - Jazzmouse Productions Ltd

Girl Friday Virtual Assistant provides Secretarial and Administration Support Services to small and medium sized businesses. Girl Friday VA was set up in 2008, and is managed by owner Amy Carruthers. The company is based in South Derbyshire, but serves clients both locally and nationally.
If you are looking for assistance with your business administration, call handling, transcriptions, or help managing your day to day tasks then Girl Friday VA can help by taking care of your requirements remotely. Using a Virtual Assistant is an excellent alternative to employing a full or part time administrator, saving you time, money and additional office space.
There are no long terms contracts, and you may use the services as and when you need to – allowing you to manage your workflow effectively during busy periods or in times of staff sickness and holidays.
Girl Friday VA is currently launching a range of new services, which includes Graphic Design and Email Marketing.  Whether you are a new business requiring logo and stationery design, or an established business looking for leaflet design or a website, you can be assured that Girl Friday will be able to offer you a great service at sensible prices.

A new website will be launched in March, and Amy is excited to be welcoming on board some new recruits to the company.
If you would like to find out more, please visit the website at www.girlfriday-va.co.uk or call Amy on 07929 726821.

January was somewhat snowy but the white stuff didn't cause too much of a problem for Nicola; after all, her regular commute is only up one flight of stairs to her study (don't hate!) Nicola spent the first few days of the year in a cottage on the coast in Scotland with her husband, friends and assorted dogs, but soon returned to her desk - only to get snowed in.

In January, Nicola donned her copywriting hat for local fulfilment company SJM Handling, for whom she wrote new webcopy and brochure copy. She also worked on website copy for Marlow's MLL Telecom, a variety of copy (from member interviews to social media copy) for the London Photographic Association, the monthly newsletter of Windsor lifestyle management company Assorti and a series of (ghost) blogs. She continued to work with local digital marketing agency Wildfire UK.

She wrote an article for Women's Running magazine about how cycling can boost running performance and took care of the open-water swimming column in British Swimming's member magazine. She also helped ActiveMate, the dating agency for sporty people, with their PR (she wrote press releases and advised on how best to circulate them to Editors and journalists).

Once the snow had melted, Nicola hit the road, paying a visit to the lovely ladies at Promote PR to hear all about their sport and fitness clients, and attending a fantastic kettlebell workshop near Guildford run by Jon le Tocq. She got two more kettlebells for Christmas so needed some new ideas to add to her routine!

In the last few months we have noticed that an increasing number of people are searching for testimonials & customer testimonials and finding our customertestimonials.co.uk website.  Perhaps we haven’t focussed on it as much as we should! Looking around the site we have done hundreds of projects and yet only have a few testimonials. It would make sense to approach our customers and get them to scribble something about us but that, as we all know, takes forever!!  How about we publish the testimonials of our customer’s clients on this site and drive traffic your way? That would be easy for us to do and should motivate enough people into action to boost the content.  It may even encourage a few more business men and women to use our service. You can be a customer from as little as £7.47 per month… go view the options, join our gang and then we can promote you via our various websites which drive a ton of traffic and help you find more customers.  Join in TODAY and send us a testimonial from your client and we’ll have it published within 48 hours and ready to be found by your next client!!  Take a look at this data …

What do you think generates the best results:

• Networking with people on a regular basis in the hope that they may have a need or refer you

• Or Exhibitions where you meet people for the first time

(Let’s ignore cost and assume the networking is monthly, the event once a year)

Nicola Joyce, freelance copywriter and sport journalist, has launched a brand new webpage to support the copywriting services she offers sport, fitness, health and wellbeing clients. Who do you know who needs her copywriting help?

Nicola has been freelance since 2004, writing article for sport and fitness magazines (including Triathlete's World, Ultrafit and Women's Running) and writing copy for businesses. She is now combining the two to offer copywriting services to sole traders, businesses and brands within the sport, fitness, health and wellbeing sectors.

A two-time Channel swimmer and keen triathlete, her speciality lies in swimming, triathlon, cycling, running and strength training. She has written for the British Triathlon Federation (providing them with web copy and contributing articles to their member magazines), Zoggs Swim4Fitness, allyouneedtotri.com, the Tour of Britain and runningsports (Sport England).

As a journalist, she has written about a range of sport and fitness themes (and interviewed a lot of exciting sports-people) for consumer sports magazines. You can see some of her portfolio here.

Thanks to her own personal passion for and knowledge about sport and fitness, and her years of experience writing for sport magazines, she is perfectly placed to provide sport and fitness businesses with on-target copy for their marketing and corporate communications. Please pass her details to any sport or fitness company you know. Nicola would like to offer her copywriting services to personal trainers, physical therapists, gyms, sports clubs, coaches, health clubs, sport teams or sport/fitness equipment brands.

"Nicola wrote website copy, a press release and sales letters for our launch. She was the ideal copywriter for us because of her sports journalism and genuine love of triathlon. We found her to be proactive, responsive and cost effective, providing us with effective copy well in advance of our launch date." Founder, allyouneedtotri.com

We've set up our news distribution channels but I need more than just 140 characters, 140 words is more like it ...

Our GROUP LEADER membership will give you wings! 

• A BLOG to which you can add your own articles, or simply links to articles you have found interesting … you decide! 
• The RSS feed from your blog will be added to both our 
o Business Leads UK (BLUK) Twitter account 
o BLUK Linkedin news feed 
• If you are based in Berkshire we’ll include your feed in our 
o BinB Twitter account 
o BinB Linkedin news feed 
• We’ll also stream your BLUK & or main RSS to your own Twitter account 
• You can start GROUPS on the BLUK website to discuss specialist topics 
• You can add EVENTS to the BLUK website and drive attendance 

Morning What a week, so many things going on as we kick start 2010. I'm in discussions with a couple of big companies around helping them grow and prosper. I've been talking to a bunch of smaller businesses about how I can help them boost their on and offline profiles and they are listening … WHY? Because I'm picking up the phone and "Smiling and Dialling" !! If you are going to read any of this week's articles take a look at Generating new business then THINK LOCAL. You should really be considering this opportunity as it is SOOOO powerful. I've put together an Online Marketing workshop for those of you with a team of people that you'd like to get more tuned in to online marketing and social media. If you are an individual that would like to join in then make yourself known. And with the General Elections just around the corner I need to do my bit to help the lesser know candidates get some of the limelight. If I can help you in 2010 then give me a call or simply hit reply to this email. Have a great weekend and I hope your team wins !! Thank you. Jon Davey NEW Business Generator Social Media Director LiaiseOnline Limited Tel: 01753 852904 Mob: 07881 744495 Email: jon.davey@businessleadgeneration.co.uk Web: www.jondavey.co.uk P.S. For the last quarter of 2009 my primary focus was to be recognised by the Internet as a Social Media Director. Please search Google.co.uk and YouTube.com for Social Media Director and let me know if you can't see me as I'll need to tweak something! P.P.S. My primary focus for first quarter 2010 is helping companies dig out new business opportunities and we have come up with an excellent email marketing package to help you identify potential and follow up. We've called this Managed Email Marketing Campaigns, take a look.

An area of Surrey affected by flooding has been awarded money to improve watercourses and to review flood relief systems.

Surrey Heath Borough Council secured a £30,000 grant from Defra to study the flooding problems in Chobham and the surrounding areas.

The council will work with landowners to reduce the flow of water through Chobham.

It will have access to the grant from the new financial year.

Councillor Chris Rowbotham said: "Flooding is a recurring issue in Chobham and affects a good number of it's businesses and residents.

"This review aims to identify these problems and find a solution that will benefit everyone."

Good news for all of us living and working in the area I'd say. Perhaps I can put my wellies away for the Winter in future!!

Any IT Managers or IT Service Delivery Managers struggling with ITIL implementation? Need to know more about ITIL?

Lots of discussion about the various merits or not of following an ITIL approach across your organisation and IT department.

I'd like to hear froom anyone struggling to get to grips with the whole topic from implementation to training to consultative help.

Call or email me - 0871 399 0089 or dean@isogon-marketing.co.uk