Search
Blog posts tagged small business
Coming in August: great IT advice for businesses
May 25, 2010
I’m pleased to report that the wraps are off: The IT Donut, a new website for small businesses, will be launching the week of 23 August.
The IT Donut will be the fourth in a family of websites. You might already have seen the Marketing, Law and Start-Up Donuts. Its aim will be to demystify every aspect of business technology.
Expect heaps of advice about choosing, using and generally not getting totally frustrated with IT in your business.
I’ve taken on the role of editor (the next few months are looking to be very busy), but thankfully there’s a whole team of great people from BHP Information Solutions working hard on the site too. And because you can’t substitute for first-hand knowledge and experience, we’re on the hunt for experts who know all about IT at the sharp end of business.
You see, when businesses use IT, there’s an ideal world, and there’s what actually happens. The two often differ quite considerably.
The IT Donut isn’t going to live in the plain sailing, smooth running and largely theoretical ideal world. It will acknowledge the situations and challenges businesses face every day with their IT.
Although the team behind the website is packed with experience (I’ve been writing about small businesses and IT for years now), we need people who’ve been there and done it to help us cover every area. These IT experts are the people who’ll really bring the site to life.
So if you know a bit about IT in business, I want to hear from you. You might be an expert in web hosting, networking or accounting software. Or you might be a business that’s experimented with cloud computing, open source software – or gained some other knowledge that you’d like to share.
Whatever your expertise, give me a shout. It’s your chance to be involved in one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever worked on – and to get some great PR while you’re at it.
John McGarvey is the editor of the forthcoming IT Donut and is happy to discuss ideas and opportunities with you.
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.
The Budget: Picture this
March 24, 2010
Another Budget, another wave of promises of ‘support’ and shiny initiatives. This year, as the Wordle shows, the Chancellor talked a lot about the state of the ‘economy’ and focused his initiatives on ‘business’ rather more than families or public services. This is a Budget about ‘people’, ‘jobs’, ‘recovery’, the ‘country’ at large.
‘Tax’ looms largest, though, but not because there’s a lot of it. Quite the opposite: the Chancellor was very keen to stress that he wouldn’t be raising taxes - at least not for those of us on low-to-middle incomes. If you’re a banker or a non-domicile, though, you’d better get ready to dip onto your pockets.
Does this mean this a ‘Robin Hood’ Budget? If it were truly a ‘rob from the rich to fund the poor’ affair, then you might expect the ten per cent duty increase to be on grapes rather than apples. In case you didn’t pick up on it, cider is being ‘redefined’ so that it is subject to the same duty increases as all other alcoholic drinks.
For the small business, the clues are in the words ‘bank, ‘Bank’, banks’, ‘banking’ and ‘credit’. The Chancellor is making an extra £41 billion available as lending to small businesses via Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland. He has also promised a Small Business Credit Adjudicator whose role will be to decide whether small firms have been unfairly turned down for loans.
After all, it is small business in particular that will ‘fuel’ ‘growth’, ‘increase’ ‘jobs’ and ‘pay’ for the ‘future’. But, as the Wordle shows, they may need quite a lot of ‘help’ to do that.
The Start Up Donut forum is hosting any further discussion on the Budget.
We are Golden Twits!
November 27, 2009
Last night the inaugural Golden Twits awards took place to recognise UK organisations and individuals that use the Twitter social media platform best.
There were sixteen categories to get through during the proceedings. The ceremony took place at the Fabric nightclub in one of the trendier parts of London and saw nearly 100 people attend the event itself and many more tuned in online.
BHP Information Solutions' @MarketingDonut account was nominated in a total of four categories, including the Public vote award which was made up of the likes of that pesky meerkat, Aleksandr Orlov and the world’s richest football club, Manchester City.
We were truly delighted to be the recipients of two awards on the night. The @MarketingDonut Twitter account has been recognised for its tweets in the Public service and Information service categories. Also, thanks to your votes, we secured 5th spot in the public vote and even beat the meerkat!
Of course we are delighted with our awards and fighting over who gets to keep them but we are genuinely grateful for the tweets, conversations and followers who put us in the position to be rewarded. In the spirit of sharing the best of everything online, we think these awards belong to the vibrant community we are forging online and hopefully will inspire you and your small business to give Twitter a go.
- You can relive all the glory moments and acceptance speeches which had to be short and tweet by watching the video replay. Be warned that the broadcast starts with the exceptionally risqué stand-up routine that may cause some offence.
ROI = Return on Influence
November 18, 2009
In my role at Actinic I talk to a lot of small business owners. Apart from discussing the latest and greatest ideas in ecommerce a lot of them want to talk to me about social media and how it can work with their business.
Much has already been written about the various tips, techniques and strategies businesses can adopt, so I won’t go over this old ground again. However, one of the questions I have always struggled to answer is “How many extra sales will this make me?”
Social media ROI is a difficult statistic to measure. There are methods and technologies that can help you to quantify things, but it’s hard to feel confident that they are accurate.
Recently social media guru @DarenBBC suggested that we should consider an alternate meaning to ROI, Return on Influence. The explanation is simple, if your strategy is just aimed at selling a few more products you are missing the point entirely. The most successful strategies have a complete focus on connecting with your customers. This enables you to discuss, influence and ultimately own your brand online.
To prove the point do a quick search using Collecta for your brand or product. Collecta is a search engine that scours blog posts, Twitter, Facebook and many others. This content is real time, it’s happening as you search as opposed to looking through a huge archive of out-of-date data. The results can be very illuminating and often humbling.
To properly understand social media, the first step is to get involved, answer questions and show yourself to be human. It won’t turn into immediate sales figures, but influence will lead to involvement, and involvement is an easy thing to measure. Just ask yourself this: how many questions did you answer today? Eventually, there will be a big impact on sales, but it’s not immediate cause and effect.
I speak to many companies that pour huge vats of time and effort into brand protection. Many of them don’t understand that if you’re not the core influencer for your company in these dynamic online communities, someone else will seize that position, and it may cost a fortune to put things right if they go wrong. Sure it’s just about next quarter’s sales figures?
Founding partners
Small business marketing - free advice, tools and resources | Marketing Donut
Published by 