October 1st, 2009 by Alan
The essence of business networking is to build up trusted relationships with people that you will enjoy working with. In face to face networking so much of that comes from the interactions that accompany conversation. It’s here that body language takes on an importance all of its own.
Online it is more difficult to “do body language” so you need to plug that gap with good information about yourself and what you are looking for. This will enable others to “find” you and to then establish new relationships that can then be nurtured either online or face to face.
But essential to this process is the need for input into individual profiles. In simple terms “if it ain’t there, it can’t be found”.
Some thoughts:
- Consider what you might want to say about yourself
- Consider what others who may be searching for you might actually use as search terms
- Work those search terms into your profile.
- Update the message if your circumstances change
Posted in Junction 31, Lessons, Networking, Personal Development, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
September 24th, 2009 by Alan
I must admit: I’ve been a slave to email. It’s been a friend, a distraction from real work, it’s given me a sense of being connected when all this exciting must read stuff lands in my inbox. And it’s helped me waste days if not years of my life.
But as of today all that is changed. I’ve decided to declutter my inbox, clear my desktop and instead of being busy, being busy I’m going to focus on the important things in my communication strategy.
No longer will I sit there waiting for someone’s broadcast; from now on it’s Proactive Communications for me!
So if you want to de-clutter your day, tidy up your thinking and focus on what’s important then I suggest that you too think about who you receive mail from and why. You could save yourself many hours a day with an auto delete filter on incoming mail.
And if you “unsubscribe” then I’ll understand why. Have an uncluttered day.!
Posted in Business, Personal Development, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
September 14th, 2009 by Alan
When I rang a call centre this morning to make a payment on behalf of my wife I was faced with some daft questions. “It’s all to do with data protection”. No it bloody isn’t! It’s to do with inane call centre managers not working out what is really needed.
Calling to make a payment is not the same as calling to check on the results of a medical examination or the size of a mortgage. The exchanges of information are going in the opposite direction. So there was no data to protect.
But having successfully cleared to hurdles of: Name (Public Domain Info), Address (Public Domain Info), Date of birth (Public Domain Info) and Postcode (this gets repetitive now…) I was allowed to make a payment.
But then I was asked if payment would be made with the card ending in “2345″. Hang on, that’s my data they were being a bit casual with. What right did they have to talk to someone who only answered banal questions about a card number and ask if payment should be charged to that card?
It can only be the right bestowed on idiots who plan process that do not match the world in which they are being used and hide behind phrases like “It’s data protection” when they’ve no idea what that really means, and nor do they care.
Posted in Business, Lessons, Moans | No Comments »
September 7th, 2009 by Alan
There’s a fair bit of recruitment activity being discussed in our house at the moment as my son looks for his first steps in a career. He’s keen to work in Cardiff and with a Marketing and Business Management degree is, I would hope, reasonably employable. He’s applied for a few jobs and is attending interviews this week. But the recruitment experience has astounded me.
One area he’s explored is Recruitment, and he is waiting for an interview for a recruitment company where he will focus on the Welsh-medium education sector.
Having been invited for an interview, he was given nearly a week’s notice. In a follow up call the same day that the meeting had been arranged, he was told that if he came “for an interview Tomorrow, he could start work next week“. This he refused to do as he was working for a marketing company and did not want to disrupt the completion of the project he was working on.
The recruiter’s advice was to “throw a sicky”, and then he could still start his job “next Monday”. My son’s got some principles and refused. So an interview was re-arranged for this morning. He was there on time, scrubbed up nicely, and was ready to give it his best shot.
Sadly, the interviewer had gone out, even though the meeting had been confirmed last Friday afternoon and the interviewer is unlikely to be available until Wednesday. By which time of course my lad will be back with the marketing agency finishing the project.
All this made me wonder: I’ve used agencies in the past, and always wondered what I got for my 15-18%, but what I never imagined before was how much damage they could be doing to my brand.
Posted in Business, Personal Development | No Comments »
August 24th, 2009 by Alan
There are 2 sorts of person in this world, and I don’t mean men or women! According to Paulo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist there are just Gardeners and Builders. If he’s right, which one are you?
Builders, apparently, like to get stuck into projects and do things that have an end result. And putting in the planning (the foundations) followed by all the right steps that lead to the grand opening give them a great fuzzy feeling.
On the other hand, the Gardeners like to plant and water, feed and weed, nurture and toil in a never ending cycle of improvement that moves toward a great vision, which sometimes may just never be achieved.
I know that I’m a builder, and gardening leaves me cold. I get bored after a couple of years and even end up knocking the building down if I can’t find something else to build.
Do you know which character you are?
Posted in Lessons, Personal Development | No Comments »
August 24th, 2009 by Alan
Giz a job!
I’ve got 2 sons, both graduates. The one who is doing a PhD is missing out on the challenges of getting a job, whilst the other, a graduate in Marketing in Management is on the trail for his first break.
And it’s tough out there. Lots more competition than usual and for those will little practical experience getting that first break is what used to be called a “significant challenge”, but is now known as a “big ask”.
And it’s not helped when a company like BT announces that it is scrapping its Graduate schemes. The ripples from this statement will be great and could trigger others to do the same and the knock on effect could be that we seen the destruction of graduate schemes across the country.
At the personal level for my sons and many, many others this is serious. But for the economy in general it is possibly even more serious as graduate schemes do produce wonderful results.
Yes of course I know that Richard Branson and many other highly successful types did not go to or even finish university, but they are an exception. In the general scheme of things we need graduate trained minds to get into business and to be successful. They stand a better chance of doing this in a structured programme. Like the ones BT used to run!
Posted in Lessons, Moans | No Comments »
August 24th, 2009 by Alan
The results from a recent piece of research by Barclays Commercial Banking are encouraging as they show that nearly 75% of SME’s describe their view on the economy as either ‘hopeful’ (57%) or ‘excited’ (17%).
Perhaps more importantly this confidence is supported by 15% of those who responded anticipating that their businesses would be moving towards sustained growth in the next 6 months. As for a longer view: 28% reckoned that growth would occur within 12 months.
Of course there were some less optimistic, 11% of respondents were “worried”. But on the whole that looks like a pretty good set of numbers to me.
So let’s remember that when the wheels started to fall off the bus late last year, many of us thought we’d been talked into this downturn. Certainly my conversations with many people suggest that not everyone has suffered and those who’ve looked for the recovery have found it and are looking forward to more of it.
Posted in Business | No Comments »
August 13th, 2009 by Alan
I was reading an interesting result from a YouGov survey earlier that stated that 38% of SME owners planned to increase their marketing spend in this downturn. In another poll the results indicated that 23% of SME owners would spend all of a £10k windfall on marketing.
Is this your plan? Do you plan to spend more on marketing and acquisition, or are you going to introduce a strategy of shrink to grow? It’s never worked before but you might make it a world first.
Posted in Business, Lessons, Marketing, Networking | No Comments »
August 6th, 2009 by Alan
Today’s Western Mail talks about how Wales is being left behind in the broadband roll out plan. But they let themselves down in their leader article when confusing the need for broadband with the need for business web presence.
Anyone in their right mind that wants or needs to host a web site will not host it themselves (unless of course they are VERY big like the BBC) but will outsource it to a web host. A web presence should not be linked to a company’s broadband connection at all.
Broadband is of course an aide to content management, but it is not the be all and end all. I can manage content on some sites via my mobile phone browser.
In the past I’ve downloaded from the web at 9.6 kbps and was glad to do so. Connection is the important feature: speed is the desirable element. But sadly the slowest speed we will accept is the fastest we’ve ever used.
Posted in Business, Junction 31, Networking, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
July 31st, 2009 by Alan
Lots of people far more knowledgeable than me have written about the benefits of blogging and the benefits of business blogs in particualar. And if you search on the web you’ll find lots of them talking about strategies till the cows come home.
But there’s far more to blogging than that in my view. Within a community, and that is exactly what an online business network is, there are far more subtle reasons for blogging.
1. To show how human we all are. A daily, or regular blog, of little importance adds to an individuals overall profile. So messages about the dog, the kids, the weather all add to the way that people can perceive you. And not a sales message in site.
2. Tell a story: over a few blogs you can write a story. Your first blog might set the scene, followed by blog installments about how the problem or project develops. And don’t be surprised if people celebrate a happy ending with you. Or offer advice on the way. Because that’s what communities do: offer support for free.
3. To let your own style develop: blogs like the ones I like don’t have carefully worded prose with subtle sales messages, they just tell it as you want to tell it. And it doesn’t need to be perfect. That way you get to do it your way, not what some people might think is “the right way”. JFDI!
4. To make you feel better. Sometimes you can be just a little bit irritated and there’s nobody to tell. Blogging is a great way to get it off your chest. And don’t worry: you can always delete it later if you want to.
So if you fancy a real blog: use one of the proper blog sites, and maybe use some specific software to do it. But if you want to use a simple one that keeps that ever-so importatn community chat going, then I’d encourage you to blog-away on the Junction 31 Blogs. Good luck
Posted in Business, Marketing, Networking, Web 2.0 | 1 Comment »
