February; the month of love, gratitude and appreciation – all rolled into one. That’s how we’re rolling with February anyway!
Apart from acknowledging Valentine’s Day (and Singles Day on 15th February!), we’ve spent much of this month out and about meeting people or networking. In fact, we worked out that by the end of the month we will have attended seven events in total this month – more than one a week! More on this later!
Other great news this month is that local businessman (Tangent Office Supplies) and FSB representative, Chandra Sharma, is kindly sponsoring our ‘Say It, Write It’ page on a monthly basis and is offering the star letter or response a £10 stationery voucher.
What we learned…
This month we learned that you can schedule Instagram posts on a desktop with Facebook Creator Studio.
We’ve just started to experiment with this – and can confirm that it works! In fact, it also works to schedule videos and even showcases carousels. However, you can’t use it to schedule stories.
Watch the video below to see how to do it!
A huge welcome
Thank you to the Orpington IT centre who has come on board for the February issue. Business owner, Rez, is offering £5 off any repair with his advert, which can be found in this month’s issue.
Rez also offers six months warranty on all repairs and beats any quotes. So if your laptop, phone, tablet device or computer is in need of a little TLC – you know where to go!
Out and about
As mentioned earlier, we’ve been out and about most weeks this month (and thankfully managing to avoid storms Ciara and Dennis in the process!)
First of all we attended a new show in London, Plant Powered Expo, which celebrates the best of plant-based living. Also in London we were invited to test out Ping Pong in Soho, which has unveiled a new ‘Specials’ menu to celebrate Chinese New Year. We’ll be writing about it in our March issue of Life In Orpington.
The next event we went to was a local eco event, Greener and Cleaner Bromley and Beyond (GCBB), in Beckenham; again we’ll be reported on this in our March issue. And finally, our printers also run an annual get-together where clients like us can meet with others and chat about the world of printing and publishing.
In terms of networking events, we’ve notched up a few appearances this month including PIB in Orpington, Netwalking in Beckenham, BR1 Networking in Bromley and we’re also planning on attending Networking Cupper and FSB Bromley this month – and perhaps even Ladies Who Latte if we get the chance.
Finally, guess who got invited to feature on Cheryl Huggins’ #BossWoman podcast this month? YES – we’re soooooo excited! The recording will be live later this month; in the meantime, have a read of Cheryl’s Boss Woman interview with Lauretta.
Other news
It’s not all work we’re pleased to say – we also helped a friend and local resident, Teresa Stirk, help clear area an area of shrubbery at Richmal Crompton Fields in Bromley Common. If you can spare a couple of hours at the weekend to help keep the Community Garden a nice area, please get in touch with Teresa at teresastirk@gmail.com
If you’re a small business or sole trader, why not consider signing up for Meet The Buyer Bromley event? The event, run by the FSB and Bromley Council, gives you the opportunity to meet with large local businesses to find out how they’d like to work with smaller local businesses.
It’s free to attend and offers great networking opportunities. It’s on Wednesday 18th March from 10am-4pm at Bromley Civic Centre. You can register here.
We’d love to hear what you’ve been up to this month, if you’ve got any recommendations or just fancy saying hi – email us at hello@lifeinmagazines.co.uk
Finally, as part of our growth plans, Life In Magazines is now a limited company and we’ve started to offer promotional videos (filming and editing) for websites and social media promotion. If you’re interested in finding out more, you can call us on 07403-550068. We’ll be unveiling one of our videos soon, so watch this space!
Until next month, have a great February!