Luckily for me, existing Santander business accounts are still free, it is new account holders that now have to pay the usual bank charges. As I have three separate Santander accounts for my three separate streams of income (Small Business Network, chocolate making and reflexology/massage), this is a relief!

However, I am still rather aggrieved that the banks can’t pull out the stops a little more in these tough economic times, in order to help small businesses by offering free or very affordable banking. After all, SMEs are meant to be the life blood of the economy and one of the major keys to its recovery. Unlike many of us, banks do still seem to be doing rather well (if you discount those in Greece, Spain and Italy perhaps), but bank charges are yet another drain on what can be very meagre small business resources right now.

The good news…there is still one way in which you can get free business banking, and this is with the Co-Op via The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).

You do have to join the FSB first, which costs £150 the first year and £120 in subsequent years. If free banking was all you got in return, this would a steep and not very free way of getting your banking.

However, you get a lot more from the FSB than just free banking. For instance, they offer a free business legal and tax advice phone line which you can use whenever you want. They also provide business insurance through FSB brokers which I personally find pretty reasonable, and because it’s through the FSB, I feel I can trust it. Other services include: free installation of a business phone line, a health and safety information service, medical care, card payment processing and mobile payment terminals, a very affordable Print and Mail service which could save you time and money etc etc.

And…should you ever be investigated by the Inland Revenue (not outside the realms of possibility unfortunately as the IR do random checks on small businesses), the FSB will act on your behalf (using their tax experts who are ex Tax Inspectors), liaise directly with your accountant etc etc and save you lots of time, money and grief.

Anyway, this post isn’t meant to be about the benefits of the Federation of Small Businesses, however good I think they are. But if you object to paying business banking charges, then free banking through the FSB is an option to consider, and probably the only one left now that Santander have gone the way of the other banks.

For more info about free business banking with the FSB, visit www.fsb.org.uk

A couple of people were displaying products at this month’s meeting: Sarah Montgomery of Forever Living products was giving away samples of aloe vera juice and Vicky Williams of Jewels of Distinction had a table showing her beautiful jewellery, which I personally love (and am busy saving up for!)

Chocolatier Paul Eagles from Kokoa Collection, also brought along some samples – delicious Madagascan fine chocolate buttons. I was lucky enough to get a whole bag which lasted till about five minutes after I got home…

A warm welcome to the other newbies – Muswell Hill based plumber Will Reyes, photographer Tim Spires, and Paul Ryan, here to make connections after his recent move to the UK from Canada. Those present for their second meeting included singing group teacher Idit Gold, copywriter Adam Harding, womens’ business coach Karen Knott, Helen Harris from the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute, recording studio owner Deanna Bogdanovic and Vintage Fabric purveyor Nicky Grace, who will be holding an open house weekend in Muswell Hill, of vintage fabric and crafts on 12/13 May. I definitely plan to be there.

SBN Members present included Becky Beach, who had brought along the latest edition of The Muswell Hill Flyer and Highgate Handbook, photographer Amanda Eatwell, financial advisor Joe Procopio, Metamorphic Technique teacher Dominique Meeroff, accountant Michael Gainey (N19 Accounts), and Nichola Charalambou of Creative Writes (sounds like her recent Parents’ Creative Writing workshops, as well as her workshops set in railway stations and flight terminals, are going from strength to strength).

IT expert David Roth is as busy as ever helping people resuscitate their computers, Marcia MacLeod brought along the latest edition of Your Allotment magazine, and funky cake maker Debby Sass showed us a picture of her latest cake with a picture of a racehorse on it (see above) – the much loved horse of the person the cake was for, so a very personal birthday cake indeed!

The 2pm Talk: Essential Guide To Blogging by Lucy Hall
Several people came up to me at the end to comment on how useful they had found this talk. Lucy is an old hand at blogging, having written a blog post every day for a year as part of a challenge set by WordPress.

Below is a synopsis of SOME of the tips in her talk (for the full deal you had to have been there I’m afraid!).

Why blog:
Blogging has HUGE seo (search engine optimisation) benefits, and also establishes you as an expert in your field, as well as giving people a reason to return to your site, or to set up a feed to receive your blog posts.

How to set it up:
The ONLY blog worth having is a wordpress.org blog (note the .org ending as this is crucial). WordPress.org is the only blogging platform that sits side by side with your site on your server. This means that any ‘traffic’ (ie visitors) to your blog counts as traffic to your site. This is crucial for search engine optimisation. (Lucy knows someone who can set up a wordpress.org site for you for £25.00.)

Make your blog look like your site so that when people click onto it they think they are still on your site, making for a seamless experience. (Lucy can do this for you, as well as install useful ‘plugins’ that help with spam prevention, social media etc.)

How to blog:
Blog at least once a month (though once a week is great if you can manage it). This encourages people to return regularly to your site, or receive your feeds, whilst the search engines like it because it means regularly updated content – this is one of the things they are looking for when they rank websites.

Think like one of your customers when deciding what to write about – what are the questions people frequently ask, what is the best way to do x, what are the kinds of problems your customers experience, and what are the solutions? For instance, Lucy suggested that plumber Will Reyes could blog about which boilers he rates the most highly.

Many thanks to Lucy for this wonderful talk – lots of feedback afterwards on how useful it was. You can contact Lucy on 07795 170193 / lucy@lucyswebdesigns.co.uk / www.lucyswebdesigns.co.uk

So that’s all folks – enough to whet your appetite and leave you wanting more I hope! Don’t miss next month’s meeting/ talk. The talk will be ‘It’s Your Brand – Make It Count!’ with Sangeeta Haindl and the date to put in your diary is Monday 21 May, 12.30-2.30pm, upstairs at Sable D’Or, N10 1DE.

More than one person came up to me and commented on what a varied and friendly group of people it was, and how much they were enjoying it. And in SBN’s fifth birthday month (can you believe it?) it was SO great to hear people say that they’d heard so many positive things about us over the years, and were very pleased they’d finally managed to make it along.

Welcome to our latest members: Paul Cowell – a retired policeman who now offers a house security and pet sitting service in North London, and Vicky Williams of Jewels of Distinction.

Thanks to Becky Beach who is doing her usual great job of spreading the word about SBN meetings amongst her advertisers, and to Lucy Hall (of Lucy’s Web Designs and Loving Social Media), who brought along the lovely Karen Knott, a business coach.

Due to the large number of people, we made the One Minute Go Round in the middle of the meeting into a ’40 Minute Go Round’, followed by more networking as people munched on the delicious canapes (goat’s cheese and chocolate together in the one canape – surprisingly delicious) which were brought along by Sam Wild of Wild Thexton Catering, and the raspberry chocolate I’d made. In addition we had two display tables – Neal’s Yard toiletries from Jo Tocher, and Vicky Williams‘ beautiful range of jewellery (Jewels of Distinction). I bought a lovely pendant from Vicky a few years ago and still mourn the fact that I mislaid it a couple of years ago. Luckily Vicky says she should be able to get me another one!

Again due to the large numbers, we didn’t have time for the usual five minute ‘recommendation session’ after the go round, which was a shame as I was really looking forward to mentioning the really good food photography lesson Amanda Eatwell of AJE Photography gave me recently (yes, alas, running a chocolate business does involve more than doing lots of recipe tasting – you have to have ways of showing people what you’ve made as well!).

I also wanted to recommend Ella Owen and Dominique Meeroff’s Sacred Life Alchemy evening workshops in Muswell Hill. Their wonderful energy work is very powerful and I felt lots of shifts happening after the workshop last week.

The 2pm Talk: First Impressions – Do You Have The Wow Factor?
Finally…to the excellent talk by Carol Noakes and Corinna Powlesland of VoiceLtd. As befits two actresses, this was a very dynamic and engaging talk. In fact, it was more of a mini workshop than a talk: at one point they somehow managed to get us all standing in a huge circle around the edge of the room, clapping and saying  ‘you!’ or ‘oi!’ to the people next to us. No idea what Sable D’Or’s customers downstairs thought about it all!

After the meeting, Lucy stayed behind to show Debby Sass how to manage the new website she’s built for her – www.cakespace.co.uk – and then to interview me about how I use social media in my businesses. Yikes!

There were so many wonderful people and businesses at this meeting – for instance Louise Exeter with her usual eloquent presentation about Chi Reflexology, Nichola Charalambou whose Creative Writes workshops seem to going great guns, SBN’s accountant Michael Gainey, financial advisor Joe Procopio, feng shui consultant Chrissie Parker, and others that I just don’t have space to mention this time.

Some potentially very productive connections were made, for instance between SBN member Eileen MacCallum, a copywriter who specialises in writing/editing web content (amongst other things) and Ciaran Ryan who does Website MOTs for £99.00.

Also present were Melanie Oakley who provides virtual support, Katharine Locke – herbalist and iridologist, accountant Michael Gainey, Marcia MacLeod, copywriter and owner/creator of Your Allotment magazine, Paul Melnick, a representative from Barclays Bank, and yours truly, Liz Bygrave, my other hat (aside from SBN) being raw chocolate.

Our themed discussion, How To Drive More Traffic To Your Website, was really lively and interesting although naturally, we were barely able to scratch the surface of this vast subject in just 30 minutes! It was great to have Ciaran there as SEO is his area of expertise and he was able to give us some fab tips on the topics we did manage to cover: whether it’s still worth doing ‘reciprocal links’; google (how could one have a discussion about seo and not talk about google?!); and how blogging can help to drive more traffic to your site, including how to set up a blog site that will actually help the seo of your website (more on this at the April Muswell Hill meeting – see below).

We briefly touched on Google+ which (as I keep on saying to anyone who will listen!) looks like it could be a great way for small businesses to get themselves speeding up the search engine rankings.

Google LOVES G+ Business Pages (very similar to Facebook Business Pages) and Ciaran says that if you post something on your Google+ page every 72 hours (ie about twice a week) this is a key way to boost your ranking. This is not hard, especially if you have a Facebook Business Page as you can basically copy what you put on there.

There were more tips than I can mention here, but no doubt we will return to this huge subject another time. In fact, on 16 April web designer Lucy Hall will be talking about blogging at our Muswell Hill meeting.

Thanks to everyone who came. Our next West Hampstead meeting is on Tuesday 3 April and our Themed Discussion will be on Offline Marketing. Click here for more info on this meeting and discussion.

We had a really wide-ranging mix of attendees, from a pet/homecare service to garden design, a singing group leader to marketing consultancy, coaching to financial advice, creative writing workshops to computer support. Also present were staunch long term members: personal trainer and Alternative Boot Camp organiser Johanna Green, financial advisor Joe Procopio, aloe vera distributer Sarah Montgomery, reflexologist Louise Exeter, web designer and social media expert Lucy Hall and photographer Amanda Eatwell.

A warm welcome to newly joined members Amber White, Becky Beach and Franziska Birke. Amber is a reflexologist and massage practitioner specialising in  Baby Massage and Maternity Reflexology; Becky is editor of six North London magazines including The Muswell Flyer, THe Highgate Handbook and The N21 Directory; Franziska is a coach specialising in small businesses.

The 2pm Talk – How To Make LinkedIn Work For You
Social media expert Alicia Cowan was our 2pm expert and she spoke persuasively about the importance of LinkedIn – how for instance it’s the one social media vehicle that every business should be on, partly because a LinkedIn profile has ‘google power’, i.e. it comes high up on search engine rankings, partly because of the networking opportunities it provides if used properly.

How you use it is of course key – there’s no point in just posting a brief profile, occasionally accepting people who request to connect with you, and leaving it at that. Alicia talked of the importance of not only belonging to LinkedIn Groups, but the right sort of groups. She showed us how, within these groups,  activities like starting or contributing to discussions, and sharing expertise as generously as you can, can help to build your profile and promote your services. There was lots more advice, but of course only the people who were present at the talk will ever know what else Alicia said!

The talk was very popular – as far as I could tell, everyone stayed on for it, which is quite possibly a first. Our sincere thanks to Alicia who as ever, was a very generous and interesting speaker. Alicia regularly posts very useful (as well as short and sweet) social media tips on her blog, her facebook page and on Twitter, as well as – of course – having an active presence on LinkedIn! Visit her website for more details.

Employers’ liability insurance is the type of insurance that concerns your staff.

We can’t compare it to anything else (because there’s nothing else like it), so we’ll just stick to explaining what it’s all about instead. It’s worth us taking a look because it’s the only business insurance that’s required by law.

What is it?
In one easy sentence, employers’ liability insurance protects you against claims made by your employees for injuries and illnesses they suffer at work.

It pays any compensation you’re liable for and the legal costs of your defence too.

(OK, that was two sentences.)

Who needs it?
Well, because the policy wording uses a really broad definition of ‘employee’, it’s safe to say that most businesses in the UK probably do. To ensure as many people as possible are covered, ‘employees’ aren’t just limited to permanent full or part-time members of staff under contract. They don’t even have to be paid.

Volunteers, work experience kids, secondees, temps, helpers, apprentices, staff borrowed by you and labour only subcontractors under your supervision are all classed as employees. Don’t fall into the easy trap of thinking that because they’re not really ‘your’ staff, they’re not really your responsibility. They are – and so is their welfare.

Apart from publicly funded organisations, the only businesses that don’t need employers’ liability insurance are:

* Companies where the owner is the sole employee, owning 50% or more of the issued share capital.
* Family businesses not incorporated as limited companies where all employees are closely related to the business owner (for example father, son, brother, sister, husband, wife etc).

How much cover do I need?
A minimum of £5m for each claim. You’ll find most insurers only offer £10m.

What happens if I don’t have it?
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) enforce the law on employers’ liability. If a health and safety officer comes knocking, you could be fined £2,500 for every day you should’ve had cover but didn’t, and £1,000 for not displaying the appropriate certificate. Gulp.

In fairness, it’s likely you’ll be given a few days’ grace to sort your policy rather than fined there and then. But it’s obviously best not to chance it, particularly when annual premiums start from a measly £32 (at least they do through us).

Anything else I need to know?
Just make sure, when you get your policy documents from your insurer/broker, you display your employers liability certificate in a prominent place on your office wall.

And if you don’t have a wall, you can store it electronically. Just make sure your guys know how to access it.

Not sure if any of this applies to you?
The HSE have a handy guide for employers. It’s everything you need to know about employers’ liability in one document.

If that doesn’t cover it, please feel free to give us a call on 0845 872 5090. We’ll be happy to talk you through it.

This means that Google will prioritise websites that have the g+ badge over websites that don’t, i.e. they will be ranked higher in search results (and don’t we all want that!). And even when more businesses have clocked on to this, similar websites that display the g+ badge will be rotated so that they all have a fair go at the top.

Why is Google doing this? Well, apart from their desire to take over the world, they do seem to genuinely want the little guys who can’t afford to pay megabucks for specialist search engine optimisation to get a decent stab at high rankings when their websites deserve it – i.e. when they have quality frequently updated content that is genuinely there to serve the customer. They see the g+ pages as a way to do this…as well as to take over the world.

HOW TO GET YOUR GOOGLE+ BADGE

To display the g+ badge you first need to have a g+ business page – very similar to a Facebook Fan Page.

Create a personal page – as with Facebook, you need to create a personal page first.

If you happen to have a gmail email account, look up at the top left of your inbox page and you’ll see your name or ‘You’ with a ‘+’ sign attached to it. For instance, mine says ‘Liz+’. Click on this and it will take you to the Google+ set up page.

Otherwise, just do a search for ‘g+’ or ‘googleplus’.

Now create your personal page – it’s fairly straightforward, and if you have problems setting it up I expect there are  plenty of online tutorials to help you. My experience was that whilst it’s not difficult, it’s not totally user-friendly for the average computer user. Sometimes it had me scratching my head, but I got there reasonably quickly.

You can either just create a very basic page or you can start to add people to your ‘circles’, add pics and posts etc. I’m sure the more you do this, the better it is for your profile and seo, but it’s not necessary at this stage.

Now create a business page – once you’ve created your personal page you can start adding business pages, however many you want but presumably Google expects one per business.

Once you’ve got your business page set up, copy the series of numbers in the browser box at the top. For example, it will say something like this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/135414504249714470406/ but it’s just the long string of numbers between the last two forward slashes that you want.

Then visit this site: https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/badge/config

Paste your number string from your business page into the box next to ‘Link to this Google+ page’

Select whether you want a badge or icon and what size you want it. The page will then produce some code which you then need to copy and paste into your website. (If you don’t know how to do this you may need to get your web developer to do it, but if you do your own site, or have a content managed site, then it should be easy – for the latter for instance just paste the code wherever you want it on the page and save. When you check the front end the g+ badge/icon should be displayed.)

That’s all there is to it. After that you can develop your business page as and when. As with Facebook, the more time you devote to it, no doubt the more effect it will have, and I suspect that often the same sort of posts can be duplicated in each (although remember that g+ doesn’t allow competitions).

In the meantime, Google will surely be loving the fact that you are displaying its g+ badge as well as helping it in its bid for global domination…

Still a small meeting of course, but as tends to be the way with these smaller meetings, they turn out to be just as much fun, and just as productive as the larger events, just in a different way.

So we had what turned out to be a wonderful group exchange, with a particular focus on a couple of the business people there. One was Marcus Greve, a dynamic Dutchman who speaks six languages and has recently set up a fruit and vegetable stall in Brentford, as well as a delivery service for homes and restaurants, with a focus on quality and freshness combined with lower than supermarket prices. Marcus would like to set up a similar stall in West Hampstead so the group was looking at the viability of that (can you believe – one year is the average time it takes to get a license for a market stall?).

Also present were Lynne and Chris Carr. Chris is from the family who set up Carr Biscuits and he himself set up Merrydown Cider, but now he’s retired he works with his wife on her Life Alignment Coaching practice which sounds fabulous. Since the 2008 recession she has focused particularly on working with small business owners to help them overcome obstacles to success.

Regular member Katharine Locke of The Herbal Human had brought along her new business cards – great little mini fold out cards which I’m tempted to pinch as an idea as they doubled up as flyers!

Publisher Loulou Brown, business strategist Sima Awad, and HR consultant and local councillor Gillian Russo-Gill were also present. Gillian has set up a new initiative to bring West Hampstead businesses together to take action on local business issues. They have already organised a Christmas fair for next weekend – 30 stalls on West End Green so look out for that.

Marcia MacLeod, copywriter and editor of Your Allotment magazine was the final member present. Your Allotment is a great information resource for allotment holders in North London so do check it out if you are into grow your own.

Please note that there is no West Hampstead meeting in January, so the next meeting is 6 February 2012 @ 12.30pm.

The next Muswell Hill meeting is 12 December 2012 @12.30pm and will be a combination of networking, masterminding and tables selling christmas gifts.

It was obvious that quite a few people had made a special effort to come to this meeting because they are struggling with Facebook, or even with the idea of setting up a business Facebook page. Alicia deconstructed the mystery that is Facebook, and succintly described the exact set up process, also giving some tips on what to call your page: ‘Your Name – Your Business Description’ is a good combination.

For instance, Alicia’s Facebook page is called Alicia Cowan – Social Media Tips so that those who are searching for her can find her easily, and those who are looking for help with social media also have a good chance of finding her. Herbalist Katharine Locke decided that a good name for her Facebook page would therefore be ‘Katharine Locke – The Herbal Human’. This ties in with the name of her website www.theherbalhuman.co.uk and adds the personal touch as well.

Alicia explained that in online marketing terms, your website is at the centre of your marketing campaign, and Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc are the outposts or satellites that draw people to your website and that can be updated very easily. Facebook is indexed by the search engines so put lots of keywords into the Info section, and update your page often – the seo spiders love that. Attract ‘Likes’ with interesting info, special offers, competitions.

Visit Alicia’s Facebook page for your own social media help. When you ‘Like’ her page you can watch 3 exclusive video tips, and sign up to receive a further 5 – all for free. Plus, you can post your Facebook (or any other social media) questions on her Facebook Wall.  Alicia’s website can be found at www.aliciacowan.com. Alicia will be back at SBN in February 2012 when she will be turning her attention to LinkedIn.

And as for the rest of the meeting: it was great to see some members who haven’t been for a while such as copywriter Eileen MacCallum and book editor Loulou Brown. Shiatsu therapist and movement teacher Geoff Hogan made the tip over from Muswell Hill, hypnotherapist and stop smoking specialist Cathy Simmons from Belsize Park and Marcia MacLeod (Your Allotment magazine) made the far shorter trip from the other side of West End Lane. Also present were Claire Presswell who makes films and has written a novel, Olga Hoffman who specialises in portrait photography for SMES, Gillian Risso-Gill, an HR consultant who also works for Camden Council and has set up a new forum for West Hampstead businesses, and Miguel Martinez a coach and hypnotherapist from Crouch End.

Our next meeting is on 21 November in Muswell Hill. Click here for more info.

Our next West Hampstead meeting is on 6 December. Click here for more info.

Hope to see you there!

The first timers included artist Gillian Beagley, marketing and website expert Anita Brookes, and natural toiletries maker Jacalyn. Jacalyn’s products were gorgeous, I was toying with the idea of buying the lemongrass scented handcream but Debby beat me to it! Watch out for Jacalyn outside the Crouch End Budgens where she regularly has a stall. Also present was Norman Bailey who has recently opened an art gallery in Avenue Mews just off Muswell Hill Broadway and has an exhibition starting up soon in Sable D’Or (our meeting venue) itself.

The 2pm Talk

Oma Edoja of Get Clear, Get Known, Get Clients was our speaker this month. This was Oma’s second visit this year (her first talk for us was back in March on how to give a good elevator pitch). This time, Oma’s equally excellent talk was on The Selling versus Serving Conflict Exposed. Oma proposed that a lot of people like us SBNers go into business because we have a passion and a mission, and really want to help other people. However we often have trouble charging properly for our services and this can make it very difficult for us to make a profit.

I loved her statement that a business that doesn’t make a profit is not a business…it’s a charity!

I know that as I sat there listening to point after point, it felt that a lot of the speech could have been personally written for me. Judging by the expressions on quite a few other people’s faces, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

Of course, the proposition that many small business owners aren’t very good at charging properly is not a new one. But Oma put it so well, and made so many original and salient points, that her talk really hit home, and certainly stayed with me long afterwards. Shemade us very aware of how important it is for the survival of our businesses to resolve this issue, and gave us some tips on how to do that.

The Support Session
Our second post-talk Support Session was just as fruitful as the first one in September. Several people had questions for Oma, and quite a few of us chipped in with our own advice and suggestions for one of our number who wasn’t sure of the best way to deal with a client who had come back after completion of a project and said that something they’d asked for hadn’t been included, even though it wasn’t in the original brief. These situations can be very trying at the time, but there is a lot that we can learn from them, particularly if we get feedback from other business owners on how best to deal with them – exactly what the Support Sessions are for!

Looking forward to seeing many of you at the next Muswell Hill meeting on the 21 November when our speaker will be Jenny White and the art of selling will again be our topic – this time the title is ‘An Introduction to Selling for Small and Start-Up Businesses’.