Essex Mums January Newsletter

Happy New Year to all Essex Mums (and Dads... and Grandparents...!)

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and are currently enjoying your first of many enjoyable and restful days in 2010. Things here at Essex Mums have been hectic over the last few weeks but I hope you'll be able to see the results of my labours in the form of two new exciting areas of the website.

Health & Fitness Special
We all tend to overdo it at Christmas, and then make resolutions to get fitter and healthier on January 1st Well, this year Essex Mums is here to help you make that happen! On the homepage you will see January's special feature on Health and Fitness, with links to lots of great ideas for getting fit, eating well and getting your kids active. As well as information from fantastic organisations such as MEND and Change4Life, schemes and classes from Hockley playcentre Monkey Bizzness and Basildon gym David Lloyd. we also have help and advice from our very own forum members, which is probably the best support you can get. Come and post in the dedicated Health & Fitness support thread if you need some advice or would just like to talk about your own health and fitness journey.


Alternative Shopping Guide
Following the success of the Alternative Christmas Gift Guide, Essex Mums now has it's own Alternative Shopping Guide, featuring lots of fantastic ideas for gifts, toys, clothes, house and home. It has everything from practical purchases for new parents to the most gorgeous handmade clothes you could wish to see. Come and take a look, and if you would like to be featured or have an idea for something that would fit in, let me know.


Events for January and February
I'm now compiling the events calendar for 2010 so if you have anything you would like to see added, please send it to events@essexmums.org. Likewise if the details of a class or group you run are not on the Classes and Groups page, please let me know. There is currently a lot of information on this calendar so in the new year it will be broken down into areas to make it easier - keep an eye out for that!


Specials this year
Over the next few months I'll be running special features on using cloth nappies, and on young parents. If you would like to get involved, please let me know.


Competitions and offers
I've had lots of people asking if they can run competitions on the site and offers for Essex Mums. I can hardly refuse now, can I?! In the next couple of months you'll see a new page for these, so if you have anything you'd like to be featured please get in touch!

Come and say hello!
If you haven't stopped by the forum in a while, make it your new year's resolution to come and say hello! You'll be guaranteed a warm welcome in the introductions section, can just dive right in to one of our friendly daily chats, or see if anyone in your area wants to meet up. I can say with some certainty you're unlikely to find a friendlier group of Mums this side of the internet!

Everything else
As always there is lots to work on, and I'll be adding more to the Map and the Useful Website page. The forum continues to tick along nicely with everything from daily chatter to storming debates happening every day. On top of that we have the much-anticipated results of the Essex Mums Awards 2009 so keep an eye out for that! Once again I'd like to say that if there's anything you'd like to see on the site, please do let me know!

Thanks for all your support and hope you have a lovely 2010!

Louise
www.essexmums.org

Twittering Mums

Are you one of the many who joined twitter, tweet away and have no idea what you are doing? You want the 'right' kind of followers? You have no idea what to do with the ones you have?

Then read on...

Twitter is excellent targeted marketing you can reach your customer base and inform them of offers and other tidbits about you and your company. In the case of Essex Mums, it's meeting other local mums.

What happens if you look at who is following you and find it's not your target market?

The first thing to do is look at your twitter strategy, your overall plan on how you are going to make it work for you. If you don't have a plan then perhaps now is the time to make one. Even if it's one or two goals on the back of a bib.

Getting the followers you want....
I live in front of a golf course, my dog escapes onto the golf course and I have tweeted this, I now have a stream of golfers following me, nice but they are not potential customers to me, they are not likely to call me and ask me to deliver a new set of tees to the 9th hole now are they?!!!

They find me because they search for golf. When was the last time you did a tweet search? When did you last do a search on twitter home page for your keyphrases? Go and do one now, do you come up in the search on the first few pages?

If you do then there is a good chance potential customers will find you. Don't panic if you didn't, it's not the end of the world but remember there is a fine line between being found for your keywords / phrases and spamming twitter. Yep. There are some people who tweet the same link over and over and instead of gaining followers, they lose them as they are not building a relationship, they are just broadcasting.

Make a point of tweeting once a day a link to your blog, so you are known for what you do and who you are. It can be articles or posts you wrote some time ago, fresh content is good but again it's not the end of the world if you don't have it - you can establish that you have been doing what you doing for a long time and are very experienced. If you have the time you can freshen up those articles and entice your current readers to revisit your older material.

If you don't have your own blog then post your articles here on the Essex Mums forum and then tweet the link. Easy.

Right back to getting the followers you want...
There is a lot of emphasis on 'local' and 'local' is very important. You are more likely to meet a fellow twitterer if they are local. If you meet them and you 'click' you are more likely to get recommended. So that golfer who plays golf behind my house and follows me on twitter has a purpose after all!

Do a local search for twitter users in your local area, make contact with them, follow them and promote local tweetups (yep, they are really called that). Check out the events page if you want to see what's happening in your area in the next few weeks. From local toddler groups, preschool classes, you can bet someone is looking for that information and when they find it, they find you.

Build relationships, retweet something someone interesting has said. Tweet an interesting non work related link, start a conversation. More importantly every now and then ask your followers who they would recommend you connect with who are looking for your services. Connect with their suggestions and start building a relationship there too.

Sounds like hard work? well no one said it was easy but it can pay dividends. Try it for twenty minutes a day for 6 weeks and see what a difference it makes to your business.

And if you are a busy working mum, twitter can allow you to build the relationships you want, in your own time.


by Sarah Arrow
Sarah is a member of Essex Mums and writes the blog 'What's On in Essex'.