Safety Consulting Corner

Your Own Personal Travel Agent

Like many small consultants, I am my own travel agent. I search and then book flights and hotels, rent a car, check mapquest for driving directions and check the weather where I am going. It takes some time to organize everything - until now. My good "geek friend" Bharat (he's not really a geek but knows everything a geek knows :) - just told me about a great site called TripIt. It's still in beta so get there quickly and sign up before everyone knows about this service and they close it to new memberships. TripIt lets you save all of your travel details in one convenient online site but it also adds a lot of great benefits such as local weather and directions to and from your hotel to the airport.  You can check your flight status or even check in for a flight directly from the TripIt page and even get a direct link to SeatGuru for seat advice. To really take advantage of this convenience, you'll want to install the TripIt tool bar which will let you automatically, from any website, add trip details to your TripIt Account. This is very cool and you really have to try it out to see what a help this website can be. This is one of my Top Ten websites for small consulting firms.

Three Secrets to Success

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that I had just received an award. What I didn't mention was that along with this award, I had to give a keynote speech to the very accomplished group of women who attended the meeting - any of whom could have won this award as well if you ask me. Keynotes, and especially motovational type keynotes, are very hard to give. As safety professionals, we often stand up and give training to large groups of people and this is relatively easy - we are excited about telling others how to save their lives. Giving a good 'ol pep talk can be much more of a challenge. When I think motivational speaker, the first image I have is the late Chris Farley doing his "motivational speaker Matt Foley" routine on Saturday Night Live. I thought long and hard about what I could say to this group and I came up with three key activities that have led to my success. To hear this speech (about 15 minutes of it), click here.

If you don't have time to listen, here's the Cliff Notes - 1) Networking (the right way), 2) Taking Risks (with money and opportunities) and 3) Finding something that really pumps you up - finding that spark to get the fire in your belly going. If you are bored or don't like what you are doing, you will not be very successful (or happy for that matter). Ask yourself each week - how's your networking? What risks have you taken? What are you doing exciting? How are you doing?

Rewards of Awards

Last night, I attended the Awards Dinner held by the Tri-County Chapter of the New Jersey Association of Women Business Owners (NJAWBO) where I was honored to receive the award of "Business Woman of the Year." Awards are great and they can be great for your business but only if you take advantage of this 15 minutes of fame (something, to be honest, that I am not always so good at myself). After receiving an award, you should have a plan to publicize the good news. You should send press releases out to local media - and don't forget alumnae publications like your university newsletter. You can also put the award details on your resume, on your business card, on your website and in your email signature line. Just don't lock it away - let everyone you know in on the good news. (Now.. I need to go and take my own advice!)

Easy Web Pages

Most people would agree that a web page is very important for any business to have. Most people would also agree that building and maintaining a website can be a big expense (at least to most small or solo consultiung firms). There are a few options you have to build a website either on your own or inexpensively and the next few posts will cover these. The first option is to use a blogging platform such as TypePad (which I am using for this blog). TypePad's support pages do a much better job of explaining how to do this than I ever could so I am giving you the following link for Using TypePad Pages to Create a Website. I love TypePad and I think it is a very easy blogging tool although there are others and some of them are free. (Blogging Platforms will be the toipic of another posting). Once you get the hang of it, you can have a web page up in no time.

Internet Marketing You Need to Know

I recently read a blog post at  Conversation Marketing that described the 5 internet marketing strategies that you need to know. I whole heartedly agree - I even need to beef up on a few of these. I will dedicate at least 5 posts (most likely more) to these 5 areas and hopefully we will all learn something.

1. Search Engines. Do you understand how these work?  Sure you know how to "Google" but how do you get your firm and websites found? To get started, read this Wikipedia's article.
2. E-mail. We all swim in hundreds of emails everyday but how can you use email to market without turning into an evil spammer? To get started, check out "Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars" by Mitch Meyerson.
3. Social Networks/Marketing/Bookmarketing services. Check out Technorati ,del.icio.us, Linkedin (one of my favorites) and Facebook. I know you are probably getting overwhelmed by now and saying to yourself "I don't have time to do all that!" but if you want to stay competitive, you need to take a look.
4. Blogs. Since you are reading this, you are probably already familiar with blogs.  Blogs serve many different purposes and not of all of them are for marketing (like this one which I write for the purpose of helping consultants discover things they might not know about yet). If you want to get started, check out Typepad (which I use) or WordPress.
5. Analytics. If you are a safety consultant, you might think of industrial hygiene sampling when you hear analytics. Analytics will help you measure how your websites are working (and what's not). If you use your website as a main marketing tool, this is good stuff to understand.

Ready to get started? Stay tuned.

Grand Central

Grand Central is a free service that allows you to get a local phone number that will ring on all of your phones and to get all of your voicemail (home, office, cell, etc.) sent to one voicemail box. There are also other very cool features. The only problem is that Grand Central is still in beta and like many other sites at this stage, participation is by invitation only unless you were lucky to sign up early on. So why am I telling you about this great new thing if you can't use it yet?  Because I just received an "invite" from Grand Central and with it came 10 invitations to share with others. If you would like one, just let me know (first come-first served). To check out Grand Central and all that it can do, go to www.GrandCentral.com.

More Back to School

Most students have been back to school about a month now. What about you? We have all heard the importance of continuing education but this can be particularly hard when you are a consultant in a small or solo firm. When there is a big corporation encouraging you to take classes (and pay for them) it is easier to keep on track. Business Week Online Courses can help fill in the gaps. These classes are free and cover a variety of business topics. All you need to do is register online to get started. The toughest part will be picking what class you will take first.