Last week I went to the Brookfield networking event at Innospace in Manchester. As I was leaving the organiser cornered me to do a quick video testimonial. Little did I know this beautiful piece of film, with me looking like I’ve been dragged through a bush backwards, would end up on You Tube. Yikes.

But it did get me thinking about the power of videos and what they can do for a business. Several years ago I had an in-depth conversation with a nice video chappie about the future of the net and use of video to engage customers. At the time video took up huge amounts of bandwidth and slowed down websites so much that I couldn’t ever see it working. But technology has moved so fast you can now have a small video on your website (or host it on somewhere like You Tube) to really bring your business to life. Rather than having a list of written testimonials you’ve got a real person telling you exactly what they think of an event as it happens (and the same principle could well apply to a product or service). It’s more real than staged advertising and in a world of changing media it has real power and potential.

One of our clients, Casa Dolce Casa, recently commissioned us to work on copy for a contemporary business and lifestyle directory for the East Midlands.

The book is currently being printed, but we rather liked the funky online preview version that you can flick through here. Cool, huh?

Find out more about our work with Casa Dolce Casa.

This week I spent an interesting few hours with some of the leading businesswomen in the North West.

We’re all part of Spark, the Women’s Enterprise Ambassador Network. Spark is bringing together successful businesswomen and those who support enterprise to encourage women to recognise that business is for them.

In the UK, 1 in 5 businesses are women-owned and us ladies make up 27% of the self-employed population. That lags a long way behind the fellas. A recent survey by WorkingMums.co.uk of over 1000 members revealed that 55% of women look for a new job after they have children - imagine if we could encourage them all to start up new businesses?

There are now over 1,000 Spark Ambassadors, using their experience to encourage and inspire women of all ages to get involved in business.

The network is co-ordinated by Make Your Mark and delivered by the Regional Development Agencies on behalf of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.

If you’d like me to come to your school, club or business to talk about how fantastic running your own business can be, then just drop me a line at nicola@allwords.co.uk

Is the story really dead and buried?

Web statistics such as Google Analytics give you a fair idea of what your visitors are doing when they land on your website - they can tell you where a visitor has come from, what pages they visited on your site and often, at which point they lost interest and left.

What they don’t tell you is what parts of the page your visitors click on, which bits really grab their attention. Now RobotReplay lets you do just that. It uses a whizzy bit of technology to record your web visitors, so you can watch back each click, mouse movement and type on the keyboard.

Comfortable viewing? We’ll let you make up your own mind - the debate rolls on.

This month’s newsletter is all about blogging for your business - why do it, how to do it right, tips on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and a list of some of our favourite blogs.

You can read our main piece in our articles section on blogging for your business.

If you’re not subscribed to our newsletter and would like to read the entirety of this month’s issue, email us and we’ll send it over to you.

And, of course, if you’d like to subscribe to future newsletters, for regular tips on business writing and related issues, just enter your email address into the subscription box in the right hand menu on this blog.

Any problems or queries, drop us a line.

Happy blogging!

Well, we may not be famous in the strictest sense of the word but our sparkly new website has been featured here It’s a web site to inspire other web designers and developers in their mission to build interesting, exciting and functional websites. If you’d like to know more about the technology behind our site contact the truly wonderful Lee Simpson at Studio Eighty Six.

Here it is – the new website. We know you liked the old one but with the launch of All Words Ltd and your thirst for knowledge we wanted to give you a website which was packed full of resources and information. Apart from the regular stuff you are used to seeing – client work, testimonials and news – you can also get your hands on a raft of articles which will give you information on subjects such as the different services we offer, why you should use a copywriter, how to write proposals and much more. This section will be regularly updated and with a click of a button you can even bookmark this site.