Now to be recognised as an expert of course you don't need to do all of this. It all depends which industry you're in and what kind of business model you want.

You can do all of this later if you wish (turn your expertise into how-to services & products) BUT if you just want to have people contacting you to work with you at this point then that is where you begin.

And to begin you need to create your platform and by your platform I don't mean that you send random tweets and chat with your buddies on Facebook. Getting your message out online in an effective way is an art but it is learnable and I am happy to teach those who are ready to learn.

I've written a blog post for you today which goes into detail about the importance of your creating your platform and why you're being left behind if you don't have one. I've kept it short-ish as I know you have no time. Creating your Platform

I also know that you must make time for your marketing. If you don't you'll be at the mercy of your clients and will probably have a 'feast or famine' situation.

You have lots of clients one minute (too many even!)

And none the next ... it just suddenly can happen that way when you don't have a marketing funnel, platform and client generating machine in place. (Replace the word client with whatever is appropriate for your business)

So as I was saying now I have everything in place online I'm focusing on meeting people offline. The main reason is because it can get pretty boring sitting at home on your computer all day long and as I'm a very social animal I enjoy meeting new people face to face as well as through my 'online platform.'

Tonight I'm off to WIRE http://www.wireuk.org/ (Women in Rural Enterprise) where we're having a blogging session.

And on Friday I'm off to the Chamber of Commerce in Stowmarket. (See us in action here!)

Which groups do you belong to? Once you have your online platform in place consider getting out there and doing some networking and even speaking if that's your thing.