Recently, I was fortunate enough to attend the Hands on Small Business (HOSB) Seminar sponsored by Kirtsy and Microsoft Office Live. Amelie’s French Bakery hosted our group and provided us with delicious tea, coffee and their delectable treats. (If you get a chance, stop in and have the Salted Caramel Brownie. It’s divine.) Our instructors for the evening were Crystal Dempsey of From the Hip Communications and Katey Dietz, all around Social Media Guru.
The attendees were a varied bunch with the majority having already started a small business or budding entrepreneurs. Experience was also varied. There were people with no social media experience to a few with extensive knowledge.
Crystal led HOSB while Katey interjected and live tweeted. Starting off with Twitter, they explained how to use it, how some of us got our start and then helped others set up user accounts. A lot of the concerns were keeping the accounts just business. But, as noted, there is a fine line to walk when Tweeting for business, as well as keeping your Tweets upbeat. Blending personal and business is a good format. Charlotte businessmen Tim Hamilton and his partner Ron Wootten, owners of Paper Skyscraper, do it well and set the bar for other businesses in my opinion.
Facebook was briefly touched on. The fan pages are fabulous ways to give updates to your followers. Seriously, who doesn’t have a Facebook page? Plus, the analytics that you receive from Facebook are worth a mint (a free mint at that!) to keep you up to date.
Next we moved on to Microsoft Office Live. It’s an online project management program based on Microsoft Office. You can upload files, as well as create new ones, yet not to have worry about keeping you with your thumb drive. With 5 GB of storage, as well as availability of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files from your web browser, it’s a no brainer for MS fans who want availability at the touch a mouse. There are no emails to send back and forth. If a client needs a high resolution digital image there is no wait time. You upload it, they log in and it’s there.
Last, but not least, we followed up with Kirtsy. It’s like Digg for women. If you don’t what either of those two are, it’s a place you can go to share content, as well as discover it, on the web. Users vote on the posts, increasing the value of the content that has been shared. The nice thing about there being no editors is that it is real people determining the value of the content.
The night ended with a giveaway of MS Office for Business. For fans of Microsoft, a fantastic piece of software to help them along the way.
This post was written by...
Lisa – who has written 266 posts on Daily Pinch™.
Lisa Frame is a under-organized, over-achiever. She's a freelance writer covering tech, travel, business, parenting and food. The need for more "me time" has lead her to search the seven corners of the earth in order to find the ever-elusive lazy streak without success. When she's not living online, she's pestering her husband and son in order to test their breaking point and give them something to discuss with the shrink.
