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Blog posts tagged Birthday
A slice of cake, a celebration and some kind words from you
April 20, 2010
As you might have gathered, it’s our first birthday. The Donut MD Rory MccGwire has already written about why we set up the Donut websites and what we’re planning to do next - so I won’t talk about that.
Instead, I’d like to thank you - our readers, experts, colleagues and friends - for your fantastic support over the last 12 months. It’s been challenging; it’s been a steep learning curve; but it’s been fun.
I’d also like to publicly thank my colleagues at BHP, who have been brilliant. From the moment the Donut project got under way, it’s involved a massive amount of work and the guys here have all done their bit to help make these the best sites they can be.
So thank you, readers. Thank you, UK small businesses. Thank you, experts. Thank you, colleagues. Here’s a cake we made ourselves (in the style of a donut, naturally) and some nice words from three of the businesses who have featured on the site over the past year. We don’t usually blow our own trumpet, but what the hell!
“Marketing Donut has proved to be a fabulous resource for businesses such as ours with its clear advice and inspirational case studies - including ours! Naked Wines launched in the midst of recession and has gone from strength to strength thanks to our ethos of championing small winemakers and working closely with our customers and partners.” Rowan Gormley, founder, NakedWines
Read how Rowan set up his online wine business
“As the owner of a small business, you need to have a good understanding of many business disciplines. The Marketing Donut is a great help when you want ideas and inspiration about any areas of marketing. The articles are practical, to-the-point and well written. Half an hour spent on the site will pay great dividends.” Andrew Jardine, founder, Atlantic Trampolines
Read how Atlantic Trampolines uses Google AdWords to sell online
“I think the Marketing Donut is brilliant and it gives me lots of new ideas. I follow every day and would highly recommend.” Neil Westwood, managing director, Magic Whiteboard Limited
Read how Magic Whiteboard grew through investment from Dragons’ Den
Birthday news from Rory MccGwire, founder, BHP
April 20, 2010
Why I started the Donut
I’ve always found small businesses compelling – what makes them work and the challenge of going it alone are to me the most interesting questions in business. And after 19 years of running my company, BHP, I admire SMEs more than ever.
Running your own show is tremendous fun, especially if you know what you’re doing and can manage the 101 challenges that come your way every month. Which is where BHP content comes in.
We’ve been producing our expert how-to guides, sponsored by blue chips and government organisations, for nearly two decades. But, of course, as an entrepreneur, I wanted something new to do. In a (rare) idle moment online, I scouted about for a really good marketing website for small businesses. There wasn’t one.
So we decided to do it, launching on 20 April 2009. We built small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) their own site with everything they needed to make their marketing thrive. Founding partners Google and Royal Mail backed us all the way, as have our ever-growing list of sponsors such as Vodafone and Yell.
What we’ve achieved in a year
As well as Marketing Donut, we launched two more Donut websites to cover starting up and law. We’ve just announced that the fourth site to launch will be IT Donut, scheduled for the week commencing 23 August.
We use 300 top people to provide the expert advice on the Donuts, but, for me, the real experts are also the users. Before we started work, we asked people running small businesses what they wanted from a site. They told us they needed fast, practical and accurate answers to their questions. The Donuts give SME managers that, free. Tools, templates, checklists, the lot: plus the news their business needs to know.
All the Donuts report live on major small-business happenings - we were the first business advice site to break news of the rise in minimum wage on Budget Day. MyDonut, the e-newsletter, now goes out to tens of thousands of people a month – next year numbers should top 100,000. (This is in addition to the 300,000 subscribers to the SME newsletters that we publish for our clients. Life at BHP is one big deadline.)
Since the launch a year ago, the Donut sites have fast become a key player in the UK small-business scene. Our Twitter accounts have over 40,000 followers and our Twitter team picked up two national awards last year.
Local versions of marketingdonut.co.uk, startupdonut.co.uk and lawdonut.co.uk are syndicated to our partners, both nationally and in the regions. Thirty-five organisations already have their own Donut websites and more are coming on stream every month.
The Donut is a strong business model, because it is a win-win for everyone involved. Crucially, BHP had already invested several years building up the strategic relationships and the content before launching the first website. As with most successful SMEs, we always knew that the Donut project would not be a sprint to success, it would be a marathon.
2010-2011: what’s in it for you?
As we expand the core "answers to your questions" pages of the Donuts, we will continue to cover news and key topical issues for you. For instance, this month the Law Donut explains how to cope with recruitment and redundancy as the economy remains fragile, as well as what to do when all your staff want time off for June’s World Cup.
We’re currently building the IT Donut, which will be a comprehensive resource for demystifying IT, troubleshooting and trading online. It will become the first place any small business turns to when they have a tech problem that needs sorting fast. We're currently recruiting experts who will rid us all of pesky IT stress forever, I hope.
We’ll also be providing a local service for users, thanks to our partners. Law firms, chambers of commerce and enterprise agencies are all getting involved. This is really exciting, as it gives users the best of all worlds - a huge library of constantly updated advice from experts throughout the UK, combined with local content.
An SME owner's work is never done, so I'm signing off to tackle the above. Before I go - thanks to you, our users, and all our partners and experts, for a great year.
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