The top social networking sites are as follows:
Facebook (7 billion), Twitter (182 million), Pinterest (104 million), and LinkedIn (86 million).
Here are a few facts about Pinterest:
50% of Pinterest users have children
Almost 70% of Pinterest users are female
Pinterest receives almost 1.5 million visitors each day
Pinterest provides more referral traffic to other sites than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined
Looks like Pinterest might be the new place to be to promote your equine / equestrian business, what do you think could it work for yours?
Friday, 28 September 2012
Sunday, 23 September 2012
Motivational Monday - Set your goals high
"Set your goals high and don't stop till you get there." - Bo Jackson
Sunday, 16 September 2012
BHS Riding Instructors Survey - How Riding Instructors Market Themselves
The British Horse Society is carrying out market research to
understand more about how Riding Instructors currently market
themselves.
To participate in the survey please go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Riding_Instructors
The findings from this survey will be announced at a conference on 3 October 2012 entitled 'Marketing yourself and your business'. The conference, organised by The Association of Fellows and Instructors, is supported by The British Horse Society and will be held at the BHS headquarters in Warwickshire. At the conference a range of marketing and social media experts will speak to delegates to help them get the most from their business.
For full details and how to apply please click here.
To participate in the survey please go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Riding_Instructors
The findings from this survey will be announced at a conference on 3 October 2012 entitled 'Marketing yourself and your business'. The conference, organised by The Association of Fellows and Instructors, is supported by The British Horse Society and will be held at the BHS headquarters in Warwickshire. At the conference a range of marketing and social media experts will speak to delegates to help them get the most from their business.
For full details and how to apply please click here.
Tuesday, 11 September 2012
How to Launch Your Business into Succcess
Monday, 10 September 2012
Equine Industry facts
Sunday, 9 September 2012
Motivational Monday - You are never too old
"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream" - C.S.Lewis
5 Ways to help you get noticed and advance in your horse career
1. Be Charming
It may be mistakenly identified with pleasing personality or be confused with it. But what divides the pleasing from the charming is that the latter is able to win the person’s heart by gaining his confidence and unknowingly open up more.
Apart from keeping an appealing physical appearance, you need to learn how to make a conversation and consciously lead the person to open up. A charming person usually is able to do this within 10 minutes and as such win a lot of friends.
In the professional sense, try to practice this by preparing for it with a topic to discuss, finding out more about the person you are going to talk to and rehearsing your tone of voice.
2.Invest in Relationships
Someone who is willing to go an extra mile to give or provide a good service is someone who is willing to develop a relationship. This is a general concept in account management or in winning a girl’s heart. However, we usually take this for granted in our day-to-day interaction.
By extra mile, we refer to being able to open up yourself – this time- and sometimes to the point of vulnerability. In short, it can be giving away something not necessarily intangible.
Try doing this consciously among your colleagues at work. Stop by and spend a few moments to talk to those involved in your projects. Tension breaks out if people have developed some relationship and allowed some relaxed non-work discussions
3. Be Warm
Come across as someone who genuinely cares by showing your concern for people.
Ask how people are doing with their work once in a while or how they are coping with some recent pressure or load of work. Remember birthdays, names of your colleagues’ wife or kid, and other personal details. Without being too invasive, get interested in someone’s personal life to some extent.
Be interested with people.
4. Have Strong Ambitions
Dreaming big is not a problem. Expressing these visions matter too. If it has been executed and made successful, it also has to be known and appreciated.
Tell your boss even your mini-visions and your successes as well. We would tend to avoid being a ‘show’ in our work environment. However, it is inevitable that we need to let people know who we are and what good we do. This is because there are people who are only good for show-offs and they will get ahead of you. Nobody wants people getting up in the ranks who do not deserve it.
Show your low hanging fruits in regular meetings but let it appear like reporting what happened. Talk about your plans for your work or team that are promising
5. Have a ‘can do’ attitude.
It’s not about always saying yes. It’s about showing your openness to new challenges and showing interest on both the pros and cons of these issues.
Show a positive outlook without losing realism. Given a difficult assignment that is almost impossible, say what you think can be done and cannot be done without closing the doors. Say that you will investigate further instead of saying “I don’t know the answer” .
Great tips taken from a blog post written by Rob Leonardo for Pick the Brain
It may be mistakenly identified with pleasing personality or be confused with it. But what divides the pleasing from the charming is that the latter is able to win the person’s heart by gaining his confidence and unknowingly open up more.
Apart from keeping an appealing physical appearance, you need to learn how to make a conversation and consciously lead the person to open up. A charming person usually is able to do this within 10 minutes and as such win a lot of friends.
In the professional sense, try to practice this by preparing for it with a topic to discuss, finding out more about the person you are going to talk to and rehearsing your tone of voice.
2.Invest in Relationships
Someone who is willing to go an extra mile to give or provide a good service is someone who is willing to develop a relationship. This is a general concept in account management or in winning a girl’s heart. However, we usually take this for granted in our day-to-day interaction.
By extra mile, we refer to being able to open up yourself – this time- and sometimes to the point of vulnerability. In short, it can be giving away something not necessarily intangible.
Try doing this consciously among your colleagues at work. Stop by and spend a few moments to talk to those involved in your projects. Tension breaks out if people have developed some relationship and allowed some relaxed non-work discussions
3. Be Warm
Come across as someone who genuinely cares by showing your concern for people.
Ask how people are doing with their work once in a while or how they are coping with some recent pressure or load of work. Remember birthdays, names of your colleagues’ wife or kid, and other personal details. Without being too invasive, get interested in someone’s personal life to some extent.
Be interested with people.
4. Have Strong Ambitions
Dreaming big is not a problem. Expressing these visions matter too. If it has been executed and made successful, it also has to be known and appreciated.
Tell your boss even your mini-visions and your successes as well. We would tend to avoid being a ‘show’ in our work environment. However, it is inevitable that we need to let people know who we are and what good we do. This is because there are people who are only good for show-offs and they will get ahead of you. Nobody wants people getting up in the ranks who do not deserve it.
Show your low hanging fruits in regular meetings but let it appear like reporting what happened. Talk about your plans for your work or team that are promising
5. Have a ‘can do’ attitude.
It’s not about always saying yes. It’s about showing your openness to new challenges and showing interest on both the pros and cons of these issues.
Show a positive outlook without losing realism. Given a difficult assignment that is almost impossible, say what you think can be done and cannot be done without closing the doors. Say that you will investigate further instead of saying “I don’t know the answer” .
Great tips taken from a blog post written by Rob Leonardo for Pick the Brain
Friday, 7 September 2012
Dubarry and a lesson in selling
BUT
watching one particular sale Dubarry missed out on extra sales simply by not offering care products for their boots. It wouldn't even have been difficult for the sales person as the gentleman concerned actually asked how he should care for his new purchase. He was told to use saddle soap. Now that's great, equestrians usually have loads of saddle soap
BUT
Dubarry have loads of leather care products
Leather Cream £12
Footwear Cleaner £8
Footwear Conditioner £8
Nubeuck Protector £8
Footwear Care Trial Pack £10
Replace-a-lace kit £10
just what was the sales person thinking when he was given the golden opportunity to increase the value of his sale?
In all honesty he shouldn't have to have been asked about care he should have told his customer and suggested products without prompting.
Now there is a lesson to be learned here by all you folk out there with equestrian businesses, maximise your sales!
Who is a "horse professional" some stats
Interesting statistics here presented by Stable Management Magazine in their to 2012 $alary $urvey:
70% say less than 25% of their yearly earnings come from their eqquine business
64% say average yearly income of their entire equine business is under $50,000
59% claim eqquine business as secondary income
53% consider themselves underpaid
30% say the economy has NOT affected their revenue in the past year
also...
59% are college educated
58% are age 40 to 60 years old
58% call boarding/lessons their biggest profit center
52% have worked for or owned an equine business 5-20 years
52% say hay/feed is their biggest expense
42% charge flat board rates of $250 to $500/month
18% tie between 'primary disciplines' dressage, hunter/jumpers (Natural Horsemanship most cited 'other,' 22.5%)
70% say less than 25% of their yearly earnings come from their eqquine business
64% say average yearly income of their entire equine business is under $50,000
59% claim eqquine business as secondary income
53% consider themselves underpaid
30% say the economy has NOT affected their revenue in the past year
also...
59% are college educated
58% are age 40 to 60 years old
58% call boarding/lessons their biggest profit center
52% have worked for or owned an equine business 5-20 years
52% say hay/feed is their biggest expense
42% charge flat board rates of $250 to $500/month
18% tie between 'primary disciplines' dressage, hunter/jumpers (Natural Horsemanship most cited 'other,' 22.5%)
Tuesday, 4 September 2012
Free Local Business Listing at Google Places for equestrian / equine/ horse businesses
If you're in business you want to take advantage of as much free advertising as you can get so make sure that you have a listing in Google Places, a free local
business listing.
Being on Google Places helps people find, share, rate, and recommend your business to their friends, and people across the web. Places for Business lets you see what people are saying, and respond to customer reviews.
With 97% of consumers searching for local businesses online make sure you're on Google Places when they're looking.
Being on Google Places helps people find, share, rate, and recommend your business to their friends, and people across the web. Places for Business lets you see what people are saying, and respond to customer reviews.
With 97% of consumers searching for local businesses online make sure you're on Google Places when they're looking.
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