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Alicia speaks at Association of Business Psychologists Conference
I’m very excited about my next speaking engagement at the Association of Business Psychologists Conference 2012.
The ABP is a charity that represents business psychology by actively championing the benefits of the use of psychology in the workplace.
Their annual conference is a chance for practitioners and academics to share experience, insights, and maintain their professional network over three days in an informal setting.
The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Shaping our future: Integrity, Insight, Impact’.
For my talk, I’ll be exploring LinkedIn and in particular:
- Why everyone in business needs a LinkedIn profile, including you!
- The key ingredients for a winning profile
- Low maintenance, high return strategies for building your network in just 20 minutes a week
I’ll also be holding informal Twitter sessions throughout the day to answer questions and queries about my favourite networking tool. So expect lots of tweeting from me while at the event using the hashtag .
If you’re attending the conference remember to come say ‘Hi!’ and connect with me on Twitter at . You can follow the too!
Alicia Travels: Farm & More Event, Edinburgh
I’m going on the road!
I’m flying to Edinburgh to present a talk on social media at Farm & More – The Farm Diversification Event – an annual get together for the farm retail and diversified farming sector.
This includes producers of fantastic local and artisan foods, owners of farm shops and the ever popular farmer’s markets, parks and ‘pick your own‘ farms who offer great family days out.
This is all as a result of my talk at The Speciality Fine Food Trade Fair at Olympia in London last year.
Farm & More is organised by FARMA – the only UK-national organisation representing farm diversification.
Farm retail plays a huge part in the UK small business sector developing into wider areas including agri-tourism, entertainment and educational aspects. It’s worth over £2 billion a year adding valuable skills and jobs to rural communities.
It’s a real privilege to be speaking at the event. I’m a big supporter of local business and often choose independent shops and cafes over supermarkets and larger high street chains.
What’s more, I’m really excited to be sharing some creative and fun ideas on how social media can help promote the products and services of the local, small retailer. Plus, I’ve never been to Scotland!
What I’ll be speaking about on the day
- The one essential ingredient you need before you even start on social media
- Oops! The most common social media mistakes and how to avoid them
- Real life examples and success stories
- Turning the tables: audience social media clinic
Farm & More are on Twitter – you can follower them here:
And you can find me on Twitter here:
Hey! What’s happened to Absolute PA?
If you’ve arrived at this website looking for Absolute PA you’ll see that things have changed quite a bit around here! So I feel like I owe you an explanation.
A Short History
I started Absolute PA, a virtual assistant service, in 2009 and built it from scratch in to a successful business, largely using social media and online marketing to raise my profile and find clients. You can read more about that in this press article.
At the time I launched, social media was just beginning to make waves. As a micro-business owner and having previously worked in media and PR, I recognized its benefits immediately as a low cost way to reach more customers, build my reputation and make valuable business connections. The more success I generated through social media, the more excited I became. I knew I had to make it an integral part of my business! Social media became a valuable resource and marketing tool for me, providing numerous leads, clients, opportunities and web traffic. I generated a huge 56% of web traffic and a quarter of new business wins in 2010 from Twitter alone!
Having experienced the power of social media marketing for myself, I wanted to help other business owners achieve success too. I was increasingly being asked by clients to help set up, manage and implement social media and online marketing plans for them.
As I made my way around the web and spoke to other small business owners, I saw that many were getting it wrong, and how confused and nervous some were (still are!) about using it. I really wanted to help. But, if I was really going to help them succeed I wanted to know all the tricks and techniques to provide excellent value. I didn’t want to simply rely on my own success with Absolute PA. As great as that was, I didn’t feel it was enough. So I studied and researched how best to provide social media and online marketing as a service, concentrating on strategy, planning and measuring – the important bits that many small business owners don’t think about. Anyone can set up a LinkedIn profile or Facebook page, that’s the easy part. Making it work for your business is what counts.
So in 2011, I wound down the VA side of the business, (which was now only a small part of what I was doing) to concentrate fully on providing cost effective, realistic, time saving social media and online marketing support to other small businesses. Enter AliciaCowan.com!
The Present
I love social media and digital marketing. Everyday I see how it helps small business owners increase profits and positively effect their work and life experience through gained knowledge, more customers and joint ventures. It’s what I get excited about!
I believe that most importantly, social media marketing has to be simple. I draw on my practical organisational skills to find ways that make it less time consuming and overwhelming, and how to slot it in with the way my clients work. I specialise in creating realistic and simple strategies, training and mentoring, dealing with the techy set up stuff and long term management support so they can stop wasting time and start seeing results. As small business owners, we haven’t got money to burn or time to waste!
I also run training workshops and regularly speak on the obstacles facing small businesses using social media and how best to overcome them.