Our Blog

It is an honour to have been chosen as Business Mum of the Month for July 2012 by Stacie and Laura for Networking Mummies Warwickshire. I have had a busy first half of the year for both my businesses, yes there are two, and also my husband’s business of which I am co-director is also starting to take off finally after a patient 3 years! 

I soft launched my coaching and mentoring business One Step Consulting, in January this year after leaving my previous full time employment in May 2010.  This business offers business consulting and coaching as well as personal coaching and mentoring and interim resources to cover holidays or busy periods.  I have been slowly building up my coaching experience as part of an ILM Level 5 Coaching and Mentoring Certificate which I am currently finalising.

I had been working on the charity sector as a business coach and strategy manager for over 10 years and supporting services within a large national charity to have sustainable business plans and to develop their performance to meet the requirements of the national charity centre.  I had alot of fun working with a variety of services from schools and nursing homes to print manufacturing and advice lines.  My background was that I came from quality management and audit, so change management, business training, business processes, ISO 9000, customer complaint handling and so on.

I think most people know me with my creative hat on – as the “card lady”.  This business has been running for around 10 years and the last 4 ½ of those I have been a Stampin Up demonstrator selling craft materials by party plan, running regular classes and one off whole day craft events.  This year I have also upped the amount of handmade product I am selling from Cards (available direct or from the Open Door Cafe in Hampton Magna) to include some of my other passions such as fun old fashioned crafts like peg dolly kits, patchwork, upcycled trinkets as pincushions, cute cushion covers and more papercraft items such as mini photo albums, covered note books and card packs.  My next event is the Ferncumbe Primary School Fete on 15^th July at the Hatton Arms (Waterman Pub) weather permitting - where we will have a real life Olympic Torch and Torch bearer Jon Heald, who is one of the teachers at the school.  The development of this business is to get selling online with some of the handmade items....

I have really enjoyed the Networking Mummies meetings – especially as hubby also works from home (Do I mention I am also a Director in his company and do his back office work....) so it can be a bit “24/7” so it’s nice to get time out come and chat to others and share contacts and information.

I am Mum to Cait who will be 7 next month but it doesn’t seem 2 minutes since she arrived early at 31 weeks and 3lb 9oz, and jumped a whole school year.  She has been lucky as the whole of her life I have been able to work from home and do the school runs and be there after school.  Being an older Mum who was told she could never have kids it really is precious to me to be able to do that – I never thought I would have the opportunity!  There isn’t alot of spare time round here but mostly I craft even then, but also like to grow some veggies and garden, make cupcakes and dens in said garden when it’s not raining.

www.onestepconsulting.co.uk

www.creativestamper.co.uk

facebook: Rachel Booth or business pages The Creative Stamper and

Twitter: @onestepconsulting and @stampingurl

Linked in Rachel Booth – I keep this to my professional profile and One Step Consulting 

Photo take by Kirsty Fairweather

Are you a mummy with a blog?

Here at Joker's Masquerade we have a plethora of fancy dress costumes, accessories and party supplies. We have a warehouse filled with various items that will be sent all over the country. What we don't have, however, is your opinion, and in a customer orientated business that relies so heavily on word of mouth we're hoping that you can help us.

Here's what we're looking for:

As Halloween approaches we begin to see an uptake in spooky fancy dress costumes. It is important to us that we make sure our customer base is happy and that we are sending out products that are of a high quality and the recipients are happy with what they or their children will be wearing when October 31^st comes round.

This year, it is our goal to make sure that our customer service is as good as it can be and one of the ways in which we can ensure that to be the case is by requesting product reviews from people who own blogs. Whether they be personal or business related they are both good mediums to receive feedback and in a public forum showing that we have nothing to hide. We think negative feedback shows that we have a transparent service and that we are effectively attempting to improve!

If you are the owner of a personal blog, one in which you share your photos, thoughts or whatever may come to mind and you would like a costume to review in an honest manner that you or your child can wear and keep, we may be interested in hearing from you.

If you have a business and you have a blog, but maybe don't have time to keep it updated allow us to guest blog for you. We can cover various topics such as costumes, SEO, business or we can  supply a costume to review. It's your blog so why not compare it to an item you sell, link to items on your site in the post. It's a way of creating content that's new and Google responds to that.

If you'd like to contact us and have a chat about you reviewing a costume for us or even us sharing content with you, you can tweet us @joke_co_uk (remember you need to follow us before you can DM us), you can send us a message onour Facebook page here or you can contact us on our website. Just select 'marketing enquires' as the subject.

Tip: I don't have a blog, should I have one?

We're going to let you in on a piece of information that is essential if you happen to be small business owner that relies on the Internet to bring in revenue for you. Having a blog on your website can act as a medium to share news, insights to your business and can offer search engine optimisation benefits. The phrase 'content is king' is especially true when in reference to the search engine. Writing unique content will allow you to rank for hundreds of terms in your niche, it is also a way of creating content that is fresh and new as well as creating internal links. Google has stated 20% search queries in a day are unique so there is always the demand for new content.

If it is your goal to rank on Google as high as you possibly can and you do not have a blog we encourage you to create one. Create posts about interesting stories that happened in your office and link to products or pages on your site that you wish to be better ranked. This is a basic SEO tactic.