Blogging for Business

photo credit: Will Lion

Is it worth blogging for business? This article seems to think so, although I'm not sure I agree with the daily updates instruction!

New Hive@Mansfield Business

• Are you a professional or skilled person?
• Are you working the way you want to?
• Are you working enough?
• Maybe you are a freelance or self-employed and would like to know what opportunities there are for you … who wouldn’t?

None of the above?

• Are you are an employer who would appreciate a simple, time-efficient and cost effective way to recruit the skills you need for your business.
• Would you like to avoid commissions and other hidden costs?

No?

Go for the back button then, UNLESS, of course you have managers, colleagues, family or friends who are frustrated by restrictive and expensive recruitment channels and would like to find a better way.

Share this post by clicking the little envelope icon below - and do someone a favour today.

Empowerment in recruitment begins with www.Qan-Du.com

What sets the 'stars' apart?

picture credit: Lily Zhu

We've been thinking about the 'Stars' of our SPEED programme here at NTU in advance of our celebration and awards ceremony in November.

I came across this blog post on Lateral Action which is very relevant to our thinking. Everyone has 'it' in them to be successful, but what have the stars got to set them apart? Mark McGuinness says

"Like many of us, the stars began with a dream. But dreams are cheap. Instead of sitting around daydreaming, they took action. Each of them did something very unusual. Something distinctive, outstanding, unique. They learned their craft. They worked hard. They took risks. They took their craft and transformed it into art. They took kicks in the teeth and learned from them. They got effective people on board. They got the word out. They promised and delivered, over and over again."

Read the rest of this well-written post here

Making our Mark

We're on the Make Your Mark Website, check out our SPEED event for Enterprise week here

Searching Intellectual Property

I'm by no means an expert on Patents, Design Rights and Copyright. I rely very heavily on the Intellectual Property Office, but luckily their website is very clear and loaded with help and information. If you need any guidance on what intellectual property rights you can secure, click here to visit it before going to an expensive Patent Attorney.

Another UK organisation with a vast body of knowledge is the British Library, whose patent blog is written by Steve Van Dulken. I read it through my RSS reader, and he probably updates about once a week, which is just about right in my book, many more update and I have too many blogs to read on a daily basis! Mostly he’s pointing out the quirky and ridiculous patent submissions through history, but sometimes he gives an insight into everyday but revolutionary products, such as the Dyson vacuum cleaner.

The British Library has a Facebook group for aspiring entrepreneurs, click here to visit it. They also have a YouTube channel, which for some reason I can’t locate right now, so check out this video on their Business and IP centre here.

I also subscribe to a website called ‘Killer Start-Ups’, which reviewed a new start up for searching patents. A Patent Search is the first thing you should do if you think you have invented something unique, and this website may help with that. A patent search will show you:

a) If you actually have got a unique invention,

b) Whether you’re infringing someone else’s intellectual property and

c) If it’s really worth pursuing!

If you want to read more about Patents and intellectual property in a language that doesn’t confuse or befuddle, read ‘A Better Mousetrap’ by Peter Bissell and Graham Parker. It makes it clear what you can do yourself and what is better left to the professionals. You don’t even have to buy it, NTU Library has a copy (I know I ordered it!)

Another take on tasks

So I have a to-do list and it seems to works ok.

The Nag is another way of working with tasks, in that they send you 'nags' of things you might do (in their case to help the environment or whatever). So you get a nudge or reminder to do things that you might not otherwise do.

One way of doing this for yourself is to set reminders, for example using Microsoft Outlook, you can set tasks with dates way off in the future. They might be 're-visit business plan' to remind you that you need to look again at the goals you set yourself when you started out, or 'pay council tax' if you always forget to do this regular but mundane task. then you can just forget about it until it becomes due.

Genius

Links for Creatives, but not exclusively!

Fellow Hiver Debbie Bryan told me about the first of these links, Image Loft. It's a website where you can upload photos of your work for journalists to use in publications. Making sure you have your pictures tagged with useful keywords will be crucial, so people can actually find your work. Debbie has since had her work picked up for use in three magazines, including the Financial Times! Click the image or the link above to go there...

Rhea Clements has registered on Indie Quarter, a UK based Designer's Blog. It looks great, for promoting your creative business, for finding inspiration from the other designers, or for shopping! Click the image or the link to visit it...

Promote your website

Got a business, got a website, sit back and wait for the cash to roll in. Hmmm, brilliant strategy! (At your SPEED interview, you might have got a few huffs and puffs from Mr C, showing his true feelings about this strategy)

Just one tiny little problem...where are your customers? Oh hang on, they're still there. Everyone knows that the web is where everyone is doing their business these days (*pah, don't get me started on that one!)

So why aren't they buying from you? Could it be, shock horror, no-one knows you're there? But, you have a website, surely they know about it (note heavy sarcasm).

Search Engine Optimisation - surely that will solve all your problems. Ok, it might help, but don't assume it's easy, because if it is, all of your competitors are doing the same.

How to promote your on-line business? Answers on a postcard please...

Feedback

Getting feedback from your customer can be tricky. We are all told that market research is important in writing your business plan for start-up. But what about on-going feedback about your product or service?

photo from urban mixer

Comments on a blog such as those below (!) can be useful, but how many of us really have time to formulate and then type in our ideas? How about a poll? Blogger allows me to include a poll in my blog template (see top left) but how useful are the results?

There are plenty of survey websites and online polling such as Survey Monkey, NTU's own Autoform (used by our SPUR researcher Sara Chamberlain) and I found this one recently- Poll Daddy

The first two rely on you having access to the target group, as you have to direct people to the survey. There may be random people out there who do online surveys for fun, but let's face it, would you trust their answers? Maybe you would... Anyhow, Poll Daddy seems to allow you to survey people who visit your website, so as long as you get the traffic, maybe you'll get results.

What do you think, what ways of market research work best for you? Comment below!

Summer School

Just to show you that life here at NTU does not stop after term ends, here are a list of courses available from the school of Art and Design

Researching your idea

Neil Infield's blog 'In through the outfield' can be hard work sometimes, in fact I subscribed to it thinking that the reference to the 'outfield' meant there would be more cricket talk and less business! Ho hum, nothing so far

Anyhow recently he reproduced this great post on background research which I thought really insightful, so here it is...

...Information expert Karen Blakeman of RBA Information Services publishes a list of top business research tips on her blog at the end of each of her Business Information workshops.

This is the list generated by the researchers attending her workshop in April. As you may have spotted the 10 has grown to 15 in this instance.

1. FITA Import Export Business and International Trade Leeds. http://www.fita.org/. The “Really Useful Links”in the menu on the left hand side of the screen takes you to a range of international sources on business information. One participant of this workshop found the “Doing business”, and in particular in the Middle East, especially useful.
2. Nationmaster http://www.nationmaster.com/.An interface to a plethora of statistics on web sites world wide. Some of the statistics are 2-3 years old but there are links to the original site so that you can search for more up to date information. Several participants suggested that this site is a good ‘index’ of where data is likely to be found.
3. Blogpulse http://www.blogpulse.com/.One of several blog search engines, but this was singled out for its Trends graphs. These show how often your search terms are mentioned in posts over a selected period of time. In a business context the occurrences will usually match reports in the mainstream media. When they don’t, click on the peaks in the graph to see what is going on behind the scenes. Superb for picking up on rumours and gossip.
4. Yahoo Finance. Go to any Yahoo and click on the Finance link. For the UK version go to http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/. Yahoo Finance provides basic information on stock exchange quoted companies on the major stock exchanges around the world. Information includes current share price information (delayed by 15-30 minutes) provided by the stock exchanges;
   company profiles; charts in which you can compare the company share price with another company, the sector and an index such as the FTSE 100; current news on the company and focussing on the regulatory news; and daily historical share prices as figures that can be downloaded to spreadsheets.
5. Freepint Bar http://www.freepint.com/.Head for the discussion area, labelled as the Bar, where you can post your query and tap into the knowledge of regular ‘tipplers’
6. Silobreaker.http://www.silobreaker.com/. A new site pulling news from
   the usual newspapers and journals, but also blogs, video and audio. In
   addition It offers geographical hotspots, trends and a network visualisation tool, which was singled out by one participant.
7. Contact a relevant research, trade or professional body for help inlocating experts. sources of information and reports. They may not have anything on their web site but there may something ‘on file’ that they are willing to supply free of charge or for which they are prepared to negotiate a fee.
8. Intelways. http://www.intelways.com/. An interface to many search tools grouped by type e.g. news, video, image. Type your search terms in once and click on the different search tools one by one. A reminder of the different types of information that you should be looking at and of the wide range of search engines that are out there.
9. Click on the Advanced Search option for any of the tools that you encounter, be it Google et al or a web site’s own search option. They offer great ways of focussing your search by date, file format, site, author etc.
10. RBA Business Sources. http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/.Selected sources of business information organised by type e.g. statistics, share prices, company registers. Yes, it is my own site [blush] but they did insist!
11. Phil Bradley’s web site and blog. http://www.philb.com/ and http://philbradley.typepad.com/. Excellent sources of information on Web 2.0 ’stuff’ and search tools. In particular, his blog has no-nonsense reviews of new search tools that claim they will change the world of search.
12. Intute. http://www.intute.ac.uk/. Forget about the ac.uk label.This is an excellent starting point for anyone working in business and wanting to identify quality resources on a wide range of subjects and industries.
13. Hometrack. http://www.hometrack.co.uk/.This site provides key statistics and data on the UK housing market and financing of that market. Especially relevant in the current economic climate.
14. Alacrasearch. http://www.alacra.com/alacrasearch.A Google custom search engine that focuses on business sites selected by Alacra. [A personal note: this is in my top 5 favourite search tools].
15. CIA World Factbook - country profiles. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/.Key statistics on every country. For those of you of a more adventurous disposition when it comes to travel, it even includes the number of airports with unpaved runways!

SPEEDy Interview - Fit Brits

www.fitbrits.co.uk

State your name for the record- Warren Paul Nash

Please tell us what problem your business solves in 50 words or less - The problem is that many of us don’t eat healthy; we all have our excuses why this may be; my business solves these for you!

Expand on your idea – how will you make money from it? - My business poses great potential for sponsorship. It provides video-podcasts of cook-a-long recipes. These podcasts will be sponsored by a certain brand of food I am using in the podcast or equipment I may be using. As the website develops, I hope to add a feature where the user can transfer their personal shopping list to an online grocery vendor, I hope to get a % commission from this as well.

Explain who your customer is- Essentially, my customer is anyone who says one (or more) of the following:

‘I don’t eat healthy because:

• I don’t know what healthy food is’
  
• I don’t know the ingredients’
  
• I don’t have time to go shopping’
  
• I don’t have time to cook’
  
• I don’t know how to cook’
  

As you can imagine, this is quite a broad clientele, so, I am initially focusing my business on males aged 20 to 50 years.

Describe where you see yourself in 5 years’ time- I see myself having a mainstream television show on one of the 4 major terrestrial TV channels! Pah, not, have you seen my latest podcast?!!! Anyway, video podcasts are much better because they are far more relevant to the user who downloads them. Sorry, I’m going seriously off topic here. Anyway, as ridiculously over-ambitious as it may sound, I want to get Britain cooking again. People don’t realise how easy and cheap it really is, and if I can say in 5 years time, I made a difference to the health of the nation, I’d be happy with that (how corny!!!). I also want a Maserati (for the record)

I keep seeing so many more ways to lead a healthy lifestyle as well, I was thinking of healthy fast-food restaurants (and no, Subway is NOT a healthy fast-food restaurant!) a while back, how good would it be to have somewhere that sold smoothies instead of Cola and food that actually contained 100% meat. Anyway, that’s a project for another day! When I have my Maserati, I will pursue it!

Random Questions – choose one and answer

• Who is your hero?- Virgil Tracey!

He may only be a puppet but he’s the pilot of Thunderbird 2. Thunderbird 2 is the best Thunderbird aircraft! Virgil always confronts danger head on and it’s because of him that all Thunderbird rescue operations are so successful. Virgil also has great fashion sense and exceptional pianist skills (for a puppet anyway!). Best of all, he gets to see Lady Penelope whenever he likes!

SPEEDy Interview - Go Dine

www.godine.co.uk

State your name for the record - Adam Roberts

Please tell us what problem your business solves - We help people who want to find and book a restaurant in their region, allowing them to see the menus, view photos and read reviews, ensuring they find and book the right restaurant. We are confident that people who are short of time will enjoy our service along with anyone who enjoys eating out.

Expand on your idea - how will you make money from it? It's a free service to both restaurants and diners. The restaurants pay us a fee for every customer we send them. In short, they only pay on results

Explain who your customer is - Anyone who books restaurants and has access to the internet

Describe where you see yourself in five years time - Nottingham, London and Italy...in equal measure!

Random Questions – choose one and answer

You are flying to the moon, what is the one thing you need?

Who is your hero? Sir Alex Ferguson, he's someone I greatly admire!

Do you…Twitter?

Who would you most like to have dinner with?

What is your favourite word?

Which Facebook groups do you belong to?

What’s your special power?

Now that's what I'm talking about!

My blog stats have improved! Thanks for sticking with me through subject changes, style tweaks and the like.

I hope you will return your interview responses so you too can be main feature on our blog!!

Thirsty Thursday

Just a quick post to remind you about Thirsty Thursday next week.

Why wait for your ideal job to come to you – create your own future today!

Ever considered starting up your own business but don’t know where to start?

‘thirsty thursday’ is a series of events hosted jointly by Nottingham Trent University and the University of Nottingham. Held three times a year, ‘thirsty thursday’ aims to inspire students and graduates thinking about starting their own business by providing the chance to learn from people who already have.

Thirsty Thursday - 24th April 2008

Indian Summer

The year is conforming to type. The sun waited for the kids to go back to school and then remembered it's supposed to warm us! Mark my words, it shines when it's finals time, to tempt all the students out of revising and then comes back out again when summer holidays are over. If you had the misfortune to go to a university by the coast, like I did, you'll know that revising on the beach seems like a great idea, until you actually sit down in the exam hall...

I digress, as usual. It has been a busy summer really, getting ready for the new intake of SPEED students. I hope they get as much out of their placement as the original crowd have. The real hard work starts here, but I really am looking forward to seeing the businesses start up and then thrive in the Hive environment.

For those starting web based businesses I thought this web based book worth a look, Mike Huxley at the Hive@Mansfield put me onto it, thanks Mike! http://www.entrepreneur.com/downloads/10waystoimproveyourwebsite.pdf

It's actually called 'I hate my website!' - which is actually something I hear quite alot. Gotta confess though, I hear it most often from people who've done it on the cheap. That leads me neatly to Toby's quote of the day... 'You buy cheap, you buy twice!'

Think about it, it's true. Websites designed and made by mates can be tempting, especially when cash is in short supply. But consider this, your friend may start with good intentions, but as time passes other things could get in the way, things that earn them more money. What about the guilt you may feel in constantly asking them to make amendments in their spare time? How would you feel if they totally wreck your branding?

Talking of guilty, I feel bad that I failed to update this blog since I went to V. Not because I had such an amazing time I lost ability to type, just because the mud fouled up the typing fingers!