Toby Moores is a businessman whose stock in trade is ideas. His company generates them by the thousand, filters out those most likely to succeed and then has a stab at commercialising them. The business, called SleepyDog, has had a few major ‘hits’, most notably in the field of mobile telephony security and later with the Buzz quizzes for Sony’s PS2 games consoles. Last week, to coincide with the much-hyped launch of Apple’s iPhone, the company released a blogging tool called LifeCast.

So how does the company separate the hits from the misses? Well, it works on ideas in a systematic way grafted on top of something we all have to do which is ‘know our markets’. Actually, in Sleepydog’s case, a lot of market knowledge comes from social media. It blends these three things together and, as an important backdrop, it uses Moores’ concept of a ‘Cool Curve’. This is a kind of stretched comfort zone around your market’s population curve. Your prospects probably all fit in a bell curve – leaders, laggers and the mass in the middle. Imagine a dotted line, a halo, a little way outside this bell, this is Moores’ Cool Curve.

When you have ideas, they are usually all over the show – some hit the space outside the bell, some hit inside and some land inside the Cool Curve halo. These are the harvestable ones. Inside the bell isn’t cool. And outside the halo is too strange and scary. Of course, the main bell is moving all the time, and you’ll notice that some people manage repeated success by ‘reinventing themselves’ to keep in the halo – Madonna and Picasso are examples of this. Some, such as Van Gogh, were so far out it took years for the halo to reach them.

Looking back at my own life and using the Cool Curve theories, it’s abundantly clear why some of my ideas have led to great success while others have led to profound failure. It’s an interesting theory and it holds water. If you’re interested in why things happen, take a peek at Moores’ recent movie around the subject.

From a business perspective, it’s perhaps more interesting to hear about idea generation and how social media can help. On the idea generation side, Moores reckons the strike rate is one in 200 ideas. That means if you had one idea every working day for a year, you’re likely to have just one with real prospects. With a team of people working together and bouncing off each other, the density of ideas goes up massively and the likelihood of finding good ones increases. This is the SleepyDog modus operandi. It uses ‘provocation techniques’ such as Edward de Bono‘s Six Thinking Hats to accelerate the process. And the company creates a cast of imaginary prospects to test the ideas against.

A major change that’s happened recently is the advent of social media. Where Moores once bought heaps of games magazines and physically networked in that world, now he spends a fair bit of time seeing what’s happening through RSS feeds and connecting with people online. He actually gets on best with Twitter, a kind of micro-blog. Many of these online encounters turn into physical ones. And his ability to reach out to critics and helpers has multiplied a hundredfold. Social media acts as a source of feedback and a way of getting word out. He told SmallBizPod, “Business is a social process and social media is an amplifier.”

And this is nowhere more true than in an ideas business like his own.

I’m sure we’ve all been subject to a torrent of cringe-worthy office clichés at some point in our working lives. I mean how often have you sat in a meeting and heard someone utter one of these unforgivable words or phrases

‘Moving Forward’

‘Leverage’

‘Facilitate’

‘Touch Base’

‘Close of Play / End of Play’

‘Blue sky thinking’

‘No idea is a bad idea’

‘Ball rolling’

And possibly my all time favourite most hated phrase ‘great stuff’! This is possibly the most heinous of all as it sounds so unsympathetic, insincere and like you haven’t really been paying attention. For example ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, great stuff let’s touch base on this by close of play to work out all the actionable points to get this moving forward.’ What??

Where did these phrases originate and how did they evolve into such exhausted clichés? Lucy Kellaway, started a campaign against office jargon recently. Unfortunately the dark side of office lingo was too strong for the force of articulate speach. She has admitted defeat by saying in her article on the BBC News website:

For the last few months I’ve been on a mission to rid the world of the phrase ‘going forward’. But now I see that the way forward is to admit defeat. This most horrid phrase is with us on a go-forward basis, like it or not.

She goes on to say that she reached this sad conclusion when listening to Farming Today and a man from the National Farmers’ Union uttered the phrase ‘going forward’ three times in the space of 28 seconds.

All in all words may be fashionable, but you really do need to know when your proverbial bell-bottoms should be consigned to your nearest Oxfam shop.  That’s another blog post done, so I’m off to challenge the restrictions of receptacle thinking …

We’ve had a long tradition of highlighting startups and giving them a chance to tell their story here on the SmallBizPod blog. Here’s one with a difference. Stay tuned to find out whether the daring Hound will succeed in getting a hedge fund startup off the ground.

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“You’re trying to set a hedge fund up now in these market conditions???!!!” This is typical of the baffled response I get when running this fact past folks recently. The timing for the outsider looking in seems at first glance to be questionable at best – akin right now to setting up a Gordon Brown Fan Club Merchandise store.

However my view has always been that if any new business looking to gain traction can tap into the zeitgeist of the moment and understand the hopes and dreams of the target client in full context of the environment, good or bad, then this can be used to advantage. By then putting some original thinking around established problems or received wisdom, it’s often possible to turn a potential downside into a compelling upside and in fact use that as a marketing opportunity.

And so it is in this context that we start to market ‘the hedge fund for the hedge fund cynic’ – CrystalClear Capital Management. Everything that Sub-Prime and the resulting Credit Crunch fiasco represent we stand against – unnecessary and dangerous complexity, blackbox PhD strategy, illiquidity, and uncontrolled leverage.

Instead we bring transparency, accountability, ruthless risk management and an intuitive concept that can be understood by anybody looking to invest.

In this way we have taken what could have been a tough backdrop and looked to turn it round to our advantage, by providing for individual and institutional investors an opportunity that understands and then allays their fears in regard to the financial markets right now. It also helps to explain to folks that hedge fund investment is no longer the preserve of the uber-wealthy. Minimum investment sizes are lower than many would imagine so seeking out the higher returns that can be achieved in volatile markets, whilst still ensuring risk is comprehensively managed, is within reach of many as part of their portfolio.

We are just beginning to start our marketing phase. Considering I’ve still got the day job at a big investment bank on the go too, until we get a critical mass of capital to launch, it’s a lot of work! I’ve not had this many balls in the air since I went naked skydiving on my stag weekend with 12 other lads. The moonlighting nature of the venture explains my pseudonym “HedgeFundHound” and the corresponding email contact details. Can’t have someone Googling me and finding this blog quite yet! However if this thing takes off in the next few months, a successful small business is created and I quit the day job. Then there will a ceremonial unveiling of my true identity…..which will mean nothing to anyone!

Next blog – “The Instant Hedge Fund – just add water”

Would love to hear from anyone with any questions, comments or suggestions!

Two huge organisations have approached me recently, asking whether and how they should set about using social media tools to reach out to parts of their community with whom they don’t have a particularly good relationship at the moment.

One was a country – the people who surround the leader came to me via a mutual contact. It was the sort of country whose leader is not that keen on dissent and the particular subjects he wanted to reach out to were probably the most dissenting.

The other was a major IT company which prefers to be selective about who it talks to and what it talks about.

It occurred to me that my conversations with these people might help you if you’re thinking about using social media yourself. In both cases, the conversations were fairly short. But they were also different.

In the ‘country’ example, the dialogue would have to be open to all-comers. It would be impossible to engage with a large, growing and spread-out chunk of the population otherwise. But the leader clearly saw social media as a broadcasting mechanism rather than a dialogue. But, for it to work, it would need to be two-way. Culturally, the country wasn’t ready for it. It would need to become more genuinely democratic and be willing to listen and respond to unwelcome points of view, no matter how honestly held.

My advice was “you’re not ready for it”. And so it proved to be when the ins and outs were discussed in detail. At least the ideas have been seeded and the issues examined in some depth. It’s a start.

The company situation was a little different. It wanted to reach a particular group of key influencers. The problem is that these people could cause trouble. They tend to ‘hunt in packs’ and if one raised an awkward topic in a community setting then this would alert the others to the issue and they would pile in too. Before long, the conversation would get raucous and the company would find itself on the back foot. Especially since there are quite a few things for the influencers to get raucous about.

So the company was coming more from the point of view of, “why should I make trouble for myself?” The answer, as ever, is that the influencers would be having the conversations among themselves anyway and wouldn’t it make sense to be part of the discussion? A) the company could find out what bugs the influencers and B) it could pitch in with its own perspective.

This one isn’t played out yet. The fundamental issue, like the country example, is ‘command and control’. It’s a culture thing and some organisations are just not ready or willing to be open, honest and trusting.

My advice in this case was to suggest creating a small private community for selected influencers and let the community grow by invitation where all, including the company, can debate the suitability of proposed new members. Even this has its dangers, but at least it creates the opportunity for an open and meaningful dialogue.

The bottom line for the leadership of both the company and the country is “what’s in it for me?” “Can I translate the effort expended and the exposure risked into a real benefit for the country/company?”

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if neither takes things any further. Neither strikes me as being ready to be truly open or willing to see issues aired in a community forum. And, I suspect, nor would either be prepared to put in the time and people resources needed to sustain the dialogues.

Social media is not for everyone. I think this is clear. For people I’ve just described, it’s probably a case of sticking with the traditional hierarchical approach of working with and through selected influencers and thought leaders.

It will, undoubtedly, save time but it will almost certainly distort the dialogue in each direction.

Collaboration tools have been around for donkey’s years. Ever since Lotus Notes brought ‘groupware’ to our attention in the mid nineties, in fact. The problem with Notes and many of its competitors is that they tended to be adopted by medium to large organisations. And, it has to be said, they needed a fair amount of technical mollycoddling.

Smaller enterprises had to bite the bullet or go without this kind of software until the advent of service-based tools such as blogs, wikis, chat and all the rest that you’ve heard so much about. These are services which enable people to publish information they want to share (blogs), collaborate on creating documents (wikis), find people who might be able to help them (profiles), pick up links to external information of interest (RSS), classify published information and documents (tags) and send messages to each other (email).

The trouble then is that if you want a comprehensive collaborative environment, you need to sign up for services from different providers. Or you need to accept that if you buy a wiki with blog features, say, it one or other of the functions would tend to be weak, depending on where the company started from.

IBM/Lotus is making promises about Bluehouse, a collaboration suite provided as a service to SMBs. It is currently in a private beta test phase at the moment. Another service, called WordFrame, was launched on February 21st this year.

Although the name is new, the underlying product has been around since 2005. It was called Blogtronix. As time went by, the organisation found itself serving two different markets: large enterprises and the financial sector on the one hand and small/medium businesses on the other. These are now handled by separate companies and the WordFrame version has been reworked explicitly to suit the needs of the SMB.

In theory, you can sign up, use a standard template and start using it straight away. In practice you will probably want to set it up in a way that suits your culture and your practical needs. As someone who’s set up a prototype, I can tell you that it needs a bit of intelligence and a bit of patience, but all the knobs and switches are there to shape a very powerful system in a small amount of time. A day or two at most for something that looks pretty good. However, the WordFrame folk are more than happy to tailor the implementation to your needs for prices starting at £1000.

If you’ve bought into the social computing idea but are frustrated by the multiplicity of providers, you might want to consider WordFrame as a possibility. Perhaps a good place to start would be the case study page on the WordFrame website.

The guys at WordPress-based development company Automattic, have recently launched Prologue.  It’s a template that turns a self-hosted version of my favourite blogging platform into a Twitter-like attention stream.

But why would any small business benefit from this type of continuous partial attention tool? And what does Prologue offer over Twitter or even status updates on Facebook?

Let’s think about the attention stuff first. This is a fascinating subject, but to dramatically over-simplify, continuous partial attention is everything we notice and keep up-to-date with out of the corner of our eye.  Technology is increasingly providing us with extended peripheral vision.  Twitter and Prologue do this by allowing us to post short messages (140 characters or less) about what we’re up to.

The advantage of these personal, concise news feeds?  Well, it’s like information ESP.  At their best, in a startup or small business context, these tools could help you keep up-to-speed with what colleagues are doing and how projects are evolving without even really noticing.  This type of personal communication also has the advantage of making you feel more connected with colleagues even if you work virtually or from home offices. 

So back to Prologue vs Twitter.  Put simply Prologue can be set up around private groups so it’s more secure than Twitter, if you want your business communications to remain inside the firewall.  What it doesn’t offer is the mobile phone based SMS update element of Twitter.  Prologue also lets you group messages by topic or category – something which I don’t think Twitter can do.  Again from a business context, very useful if you want to keep up-to-date with specific projects.

I’d definitely give Prologue a look and can see it being tremendously useful for distributed or virtual workforces and for teams brought together to work on specific projects.  What’s more, like Twitter, it’s free.

A final caveat.  One person’s ‘continuous partial attention’, is another person’s ‘irritating distraction’.  We all need to evolve our information triage skills.  Some find this harder than others.  But that’s a topic for another day …

. . . Nope, I’m not recommending donning a red suit, or buying all and sundry expensive gifts. Take a bit of time out over the Christmas break, for a bit of beard (or chin) stroking and reflect on your marketing activity over 2008.

Ask yourself these very basic questions as you’re sitting back, attempting to digest your turkey, mince pies, chocolates and the inevitable gallon of exotic booze. . .

• What did I do in 2007 that comes under the marketing banner?
• What went well?
• What didn’t go so well?
• What am I kidding myself about in my answers to the first 3 questions? Because let’s face it, if we’ve done a web site, produced a nice bit of print, or attended a humm-dinger of a networking event, but have got diddly from it, we might think we’ve done well (on effort), but we’re probably a bit light on results.

And here are the killers:

• What would I do again?
• Did some of my 2007 successes come from activities I didn’t class as marketing a minute ago? (If so, it’s time to revisit your notion of what marketing is, because those all important conversations with your existing clients that swell the order book count, as do recommendations that just seemed to ‘walk in the door’).
• What would I like to do that I simply don’t find the time for? (And if there are a few answers springing up to this one, ask yourself: What would it cost me to get some help for this. And would the activity convert into hard cash to pay for that help?

Answer these little Christmas crackers and you’ll be rolling into the new year with a part-baked marketing plan for the next 12 months. So once you’ve eaten the last sausage roll and downed the last sherry, you can come back to these same thoughts with a a renewed appetite for marketing that will make 2008 a joyous one. Ho ho ho.

Enjoy!

Well, a former dragon anyway – Rachel Elnaugh, late of Dragon’s Den and Red Letter Days, is holding forth on the subject of franchising on her blog.

She makes a number of points that will be familiar to several franchisors. It’s not a proper business, we often hear. It’s a substitute for doing your own thing because you can’t make your own decisions about stuff. On the other hand it’s the sort of business people often opt for when they’ve seen the alternative, of building your own brand from scratch, which is very difficult indeed.

Well, yes, up to a point. But even this can give the impression that it’s the people who aren’t quite good enough that end up running a franchise, if you’re not creative enough to imagine your own business then you’ll end up in the franchise market. I don’t actually accept that (and I should stress it’s not what Elnaugh says, just a conclusion one could reach). But there is a difference.

My instinct is that the franchise option appeals to the person who loves business but who hates the start-up phase. Typically they won’t underestimate their tasks but they’ll want to bypass them – they’ll see no particular reason to build a brand of their own, they don’t want to empire-build.

Ultimately they’ll be lifestyle entrepreneurs. They might not have a colossus to sell when they reach retirement but they’ll have been pleased enough to earn a living doing substantially their own thing. They might even (PREPARES FOR ROTTEN EGGS) be nicer people than the ones who ruthlessly build something up from nothing and end up trampling all over the competition.

Oh, and if you ever look into it for yourself and see what the initial outlay is, you’ll find they have a lot of money to start off. Oh boy do they have a lot of money…

Just a quick note to say thank you to all SmallBizPod’s loyal listeners, readers and contributors.  The community is growing and as the podcast and blog become more popular, opportunities arise which mean we’re going to be able to continue developing what we’re doing here.  Your feedback is vital, so do let me know what you’d like to see at SmallBizPod over the coming months.

I’d also like to say a big thank you to the guys at Abbey Business Centres for sponsoring the SmallBizPod blog.  One of the beauties of managing sponsorship in house is that I can make sure that sponsors are relevant and I’m comfortable working with them.  I’ve always taken the view that if those two criteria are met, the chances are they’re going to fit in well and complement, rather than disrupt the site and your enjoyment of it.  Thanks to Donal and James at Abbey for making it happen.

Finally, I’m working on some interesting SmallBizPod-related projects to be launched during the last quarter of the year.  More on those later … suffice to say, video is very much on the agenda.

In a 1943 paper entitled ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’, psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a hierarchy of human needs. It ascended from the basics – air and water – all the way up to self-actualisation. The theory has stood the test of time, despite the occasional snipe based on exceptions to the general principles.

It is interesting to see how computer software has attempted to satisfy these needs. Thanks to the ubiquity of broadband and powerful personal computers, we are seeing new ways of moving up Maslow’s hierarchy. The question for all company directors is whether this satisfaction of human needs is a benefit or disadvantage to the business.

In brief, Maslow’s levels are:

1. Physiological: water, oxygen, elimination of waste
2. Safety: stability, protection, boundaries
3. Belonging: friends, family, community
4. Esteem: reality-based self-respect, followed by the esteem of others (prestige, reputation etc)
5. Self actualisation: be all that you can be

Unless you’re an ascetic, it’s difficult to achieve a higher level without first satisfying those below.

The first four only motivate you when you haven’t got them. And we can easily slip back down the hierarchy under adverse circumstances – bankruptcy, being mugged or throttled, divorce etc.

Self-actualised people are generally authentic, open, straightforward and don’t get their kicks at others’ expense. Nor do they slavishly follow fads and fashions. But they probably have tendencies which are regarded by others as eccentric.

There’s much more to Maslow’s theory than this, obviously, but I hope you get the general idea.

I’d say that computer software, until recently, has mainly addressed level 2. (The level numbers are mine, not Maslow’s, by the way.) And the safety, stability, protection, boundaries are those that the organisation wished to impose on the staff while trying to convey an illusion to them of levels 3, 4 and maybe 5.

Now, with social software running rampant: blogs, wikis, instant messaging, Twitter and Jaiku messages, Facebook, Second Life and so on, everyone who is so inclined can make a name for themselves and engage with people of common interest from all over the world. Your challenge is to determine to what extent these mechanisms can serve your business, rather than just the hierarchy-climbing drives of your staff.

When you put bloggers, business and the sack together you’ve normally got a good story, but has a recent survey from Croner over-exaggerated the risk that blogging employees pose to business and their own job security? 

According to the research from YouGov commissioned by Croner, 39% of employees who have personal blogs are risking the sack by posting sensitive information about their employer, workplace or colleagues. 

Gillian Dowling, technical consultant at Croner, makes some good points about being circumspect:

An employee can be lulled into a false sense of security and sound offs about his bad day at work on a blog without fully considering the impact such a posting may have.

But … what not many in mainstream media appear to have asked, is how many employees are bloggers and therefore how many have actually admitted posting indiscreetly about their employer?

The BBC, which covered the story first suggests wrongly that 2,000 bloggers were interviewed.  The stats that I’ve seen from Croner show that only 8% (185) of a sample of 2,315 said they had a blog. 

Therefore only just over one in three of that 8% admitted posting anything sensitive that could get them the sack.  If my maths is correct, that’s just 72 our of a total of 185.  Hardly a statistically valid sample on which to base a story. 

Rule 101 of PR-led surveys – always check the sample.  Unless of course the facts get in the way of a good story!

It’s very easy sometimes to forget that the vast majority of people, and quite possibly the vast majority of visitors to SmallBizPod, haven’t had the time to suss out what all this RSS and feed stuff is and why it can make their lives easier.

Using a feed reader like Google Reader can really speed up how you keep track of what interests you on the web.  Using iTunes, for example, means you never have to remember to download a podcast again.

Well I’ve just updated some screencasts which I hope you find useful.  Click on the links below and let me know how you get on.

How To Subscribe To A Podcast

How To Subscribe With iTunes

How To Subscribe With A Podcatcher

How To Subscribe To A Blog

How To Subscribe with Google Reader

How To Subscribe with Email

Last week, I spoke at a conference on the subject of ‘new technologies’. Not that I agreed with the title, mind you. It rather depends how one interprets ‘technologies’. To me, information, communication, culture and services are the important things. The technologies which support them are essential (broadband and computers) but not inherently interesting. The audience, I should mention, were information professionals, largely drawn from libraries and documentation centres.

These are people whose institutions have spent centuries being the guardians of information. They select, collect, categorise and disseminate. They advise and guide the searcher for knowledge. They are masters of their information universes and, by and large, they felt very uneasy with my description of the new world that increasing numbers of their clients and prospects occupy. A world in which information is a mouse click away. A world of sense and nonsense all jumbled together. But a world with its own pathways to authentic information and commentary.

A few times I asked for a show of hands – who’s written a blog, who reads blogs, who’s watched YouTube, who’s used a wiki – etcetera. A tiny, tiny, percentage of the 250-strong audience raised their hands in response. Yet this is, increasingly, the world of their clients. Yours too, I might add.

If you’re not a participant, it’s difficult to make sense of this new world. Of how traditional authority is being replaced by a mesh of information exchange between digitally connected and, often, well-informed citizens. A lot of the debate that followed my presentation was punctuated by the words ‘citoyen’ and ‘vérité’. (We were in Brussels.) Citizen and truth.

While my French is light years from perfect, the mood was clear. A hornets nest had been stirred. One example: ‘citizens’ were responsible for the inaccuracies in Wikipedia, so how can they be trusted? Regretfully, I’d mentioned Wikipedia in passing, after describing the value of wikis for collaborative projects. I’d shown a picture of an Amish barn-building project. 150 men erected a sizeable barn in half a day. No payment, just some good food from the womenfolk. I see the wiki as barn-building software.

The point of all this is not to take a pop at my audience, because they are still in the majority at the moment, but to show them how the information world is changing. We are all surrounded by what I called a ‘digital infosphere’ into which we all tap to differing degrees. (To my irritation, Luciano Floridi had already coined the ‘infosphere’ term some years ago. I thought I was being original.) And people are going to tap in. And they’re going to find online tools and services to help them navigate, provide and extract value from this world.

Think tagging, rss, search, recommendation engines, blogs, wikis, mashups and so on. And, if you don’t know what I’m banging on about, then perhaps you need to consider whether your own customers inhabit this world. And, if they do, whether you’d care to join them. It could do you an enormous amount of good.

More from me if you want it. Just add your comments below.

Have you heard of web 2.0? Until a couple of months ago, I hadn’t. Now it seems to be everywhere I look on the Internet. But talk to your average business person on the street (as opposed to on-line) and you’ll still get a puzzled look and ‘Web two point what?’

It seems that as far as buzz words and phrases like these go, there are those who are in the know, (nudge nudge). And those who simply aren’t. So if you’re already web 2.0 savvy, stop reading. It maybe a lot of you – after all you’re here aren’t you? Gathering knowledge on the web, probably receiving feeds of quality content straight to your machine and hopping effortlessly from one choice link to the next. But if you’re still seeking enlightenment on the whole web 2.0 business, click here and have a look at a brilliant clip, my colleague Alex here at Smallbizpod pointed out to me. . .(check 06 Feb)

Web 2.0 is like version 2 of all things webby. Some pointy heads in silicone valley decided that boring, static web executions were outmoded (version 1), and ready for the scrap heap so they coined the phrase Web 2.0 to signify the new and exciting things that were happening on-line.

Web 2.0 stands for intuition, interaction, learning and communities. For sticky content and viral appeal. For bloggers, floggers and a generation of consumers who make the web their first port of call for just about anything they need, be it information, or a new pair of pants.

The old two point zero lingo seems to have stuck, and now there’s talk of Marketing 2.0 as well. This is leading edge stuff. So if you want to get your head around where Marketing is heading, this is a great article, from Adweek. And this well written blog on ‘Engagement Principles’ should help bring you into the inner circle of them that know about two point oh.

Just before Christmas last year, blogger and cartoonist Hugh MacLeod and the South African winery Stormhoek released a 40% discount voucher for Thresher’s wine. Bloggers spread the word and all hell broke loose – £15 million in sales and national TV coverage ensued.

Well they’re at it again. For those readers who haven’t already picked one up, here’s something to cheer your weekend.

You can download the coupon here. [Doh ... as they say ... sadly the offer ended rather suitably on April 1st, so apologies dear reader for not getting this to you sooner!]

Some wondered whether lightning would strike twice when the promotion was released on 21 March. It remains to be seen. Perhaps Hugh and Stormhoek will report back and perhaps Jason will have lost his 10p bet.

Frankly, however, I’d be surprised if it hasn’t worked as well – it is after all a good deal. Reportedly at least a little better than Thresher’s normal discounts. It hasn’t attracted any mainstream media attention because it’s no longer news. But … people like Hugh which makes a big difference. They like being able to point their friends to some discounted alcohol. They like being part of something.

For all these reasons the Thresher/Stormhoek discount voucher remains one of the best examples of ordinary people spreading the word online, like they might about a good deal when they’re down the pub or wandering around Tesco’s. Only difference is the internet makes it bigger and quicker.

stormhoek, thresher, viral, blogging, cluetrain

If you’re looking for an example of a smart UK company blogging very well and really engaging its customers, look no further than the Innocent Drinks blog.

The blog itself is an entertaining mashup of news, Youtube clips, Innocent staff views and photos and of course pictures, feedback and creative uses of Innocent packaging by its customers.  Gillian, for example, who has turned an Innocent carton into a hamster home! 

What a contrast.  Just two years ago a couple of impoverished young Americans made creative use of some old Fedex boxes to build some furniture they couldn’t otherwise afford.  They thought it was fun and posted pictures on the internet.  Fedex promptly sued, making themselves the laughing stock of the blogosphere.  The company came across as corporate, humourless and completely lacking in imagination.  The marketing opportunity to make the most of a brand mashup was wasted.

Of course Fedex and Innocent are superficially very different brands.  But the fact remains protecting your brand is one thing, allowing people to embrace it is another.  An embrace is warm and affectionate.  Protection is hard and defensive. 

Hot on the heels of blogging comes micro-blogging. 140-character quick thoughts addressed to your friends, your followers or the world at large. Average number of posts per person per day are between three and five. Clearly targeted at a generation brought up to think that the world revolves around themselves, twitter is narcissistic in the extreme.

I mean, who cares where you are or what you’re doing? Okay, maybe your mum does. Mostly, people couldn’t give a toss. Many of the messages just smack of showing off. A bit like blogs really. Oh dear, did I really just say that?

Okay, at least in a blog you have enough space to try and inform or entertain. In a 140-character message you’re not going to be able to say much.

Let me explain a bit more: you can send and receive twitter messages via your computer or your mobile phone. People who want to receive your messages are your followers. People who are part of your group are your friends. It’s essentially a broadcast mechanism within those limits. You can, however, send private messages to individuals, without needing to know their mobile phone number. Hmmm. That’s neat.

Thinking about it some more, there could be some useful business potential here. What if you had a delivery service and you wanted to warn drivers about accidents or holdups? What if the driver wanted to let you know about progress? Some people sell some darned expensive equipment to achieve that kind of status reporting.

The idea of keeping in touch through the phone (regular SMS) or the web was quite inspired. You could even put your mum on the friends list or ping her directly.

Maybe it’s worth a look after all.

Some small business links to check out over the weekend:

• Anita Campbell at SmallBizTrends reports on a new survey that shows small business leaders inspire the highest confidence;
• Success From The Nest asks what are you doing to move things forward;
• Big Words for Small Business – alphabetic advice and inspiration;
• the 13th Carnival of Entrepreneurs;
• Sharon Sarmiento laughs along with positive thinking viral video … The Secret.

Precocious, yet modest US entrepreneur, Ben Casnocha, has recently launched a wiki to which anyone can contribute their business rules of thumb. 

I like it.  It seems to be turning into a business dictionary of quotations, with plenty of pithy, yet useful advice.  Definitely worth visiting and contributing to, if you enjoy a good aphorism.

Those of you who know me well will also know that I enjoy blogging, but when pressure of work takes hold radio silence sometimes ensues for a few days.

Well, it’s been very busy here.  The podcasting is going from strength to strength and there are lots of interesting potential interviews to get done and other developments to explore.  Plenty to keep me occupied and pre-occupied.

Plenty to keep me distracted from blogging.  So for ages I’ve thought it would be good to get some lively, intelligent and practical writers on board to blog regularly for SmallBizPod.

Well, things are looking promising on that front and I hope by end February/beginning March I’ll be able to introduce you to some really rather excellent bloggers!  Each will blog about a specific theme relevant to start-ups and small businesses – let’s say franchising, technology, marketing or finance.  The focus will be on practical advice and inspiration, just like SmallBizPod itself.

Incidentally, if you are a blogger or know of one that you think might like to write for SmallBizPod, do let me know. 

As blog niches go petrol-heads are a classic.  As the geeks of the motor world, obsessed by specs, horsepower, finish, design and the latest car gossip they are a perfect audience. 

Refine that down to VW and Audi geeks and you’ve got a small business blog with some potential.  That’s what St Alban’s based Follet Motors which also happens to be a garage specialising in VW and Audi has done.

The Follett blog has only recently been launched, but if it can stay the course for its first 6-12 months, aggregate VW & Audi stories as it’s doing now, but also include some original content as well as the inside track on its own business, it should attract a following and some attention.  Surely the UK’s first garage to start blogging?

Check out the Youtube video they’ve already put up … seriously hardcore stuff on the shearing of an Audi A4 1.8 suspension unit.

Tags: audi, vw, small business blog, St Albans, Follett

Mike Sansone is convinced that 2007 will be the year of the small business blogger.  It would be good to see, simply because there are now many practical examples of how blogging can be good for business.

I’ve always maintained that blogs suit smaller businesses, better than they suit bigger businesses, albeit time may prove a constraint.  SME’s are already more personal and there are fewer hierarchies to filter the voice of the business.

If you view your blog as a tool to express your passion, enthusiasm, highs and lows as a business owner, it can become a compelling marketing tool.

If you use it as a compelling marketing tool, it’s likely to go unread.

Tags: SME, business bloggers

I’ve been tagged twice over the festive period by the chain letter-style blog tagging craze. Basically a question is asked of a blogger and that blogger then has to pass the same question on to 5 other bloggers.

The latest blog tagging meme has been so ubiquitous it’s almost embarrassing not to have been included. Actually, they’re a fun diversion and you do end up learning something about people you might not have known before.

So, thanks to Heather at Eie Flud (apologies for including too many ‘i’s in my previous blog post) and Gordon at Broken Bulbs for making me ‘it’.

So Heather’s question first (and the one which I’ve noticed most in the blogosphere):

5 Things You Never Knew About Alex Bellinger at SmallBizPod

• I used to be a goatherd in Corsica.
• I spent a long, steamy afternoon in a kitchen with Nigella Lawson helping to teach her about flour while working at the Flour Advisory Bureau.
• I have a degree in English Literature and wrote a dissertation on comedy in the plays of Samuel Beckett.
• I am descended from the illegitimate line of a British Prime Minister (I leave you to ponder which one).
• I have a 1950s Paris A-Z given to me as a gift by a convicted murderer while I was staying in a homeless hostel in Aix-en-Provence.

Now on to Gordon’s 5 questions:

1. What have you learned so far from visitors to your blog?

More precisely SmallBizPod listeners and bloggers in general have taught me that there really is wisdom in crowds.

2. If someone would offer to pay for a course (or more) for you, what would that course be?

I think I’d go for two courses (kind of) – one practical, one spiritual. I’d like to go on an intensive course on programming php and mysql. Secondly I’d like to go on a two week Theravada Buddhist retreat.

3. Are you satisfied with what you’ve achieved in 2006, in general?

From a business perspective, no. That’s what makes this year so challenging and exciting!

4. Has blogging changed your life or your personality in any way?

Blogging and podcasting have certainly changed my life. Both have reshaped my perspective, my work, and genuinely enriched my existence. How have they enriched it? Quite simply through the amazing people that I’ve had the privilege to have met, socialised and worked with over the last 18 months or so. Thank you all. As for my personality – I hope I’m a little more generous and a little more open than I used to be.

5. If you had the opportunity to meet one person that you admire the most in the world, who would that person be?

Very difficult one this, as there isn’t one person I admire most. I’m not so much interested in meeting the famous as I am in meeting extraordinary ordinary people. Echoing Time, I think the person I’d most like to meet would therefore be you - drop me an email and say hello!

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OK now on to who I’m going to tag. For the ’5 Things You Didn’t Know … ‘ meme, I’ll tag a bunch of UK podcasters and Mr Pegg: podcastpaul, neil dixon, dean whitbread, mark hunter, adrian pegg.

Now for the 5 questions related to blogging I’ll pass the baton to: Carolyn Mumby, Anita Campbell, Fraser at the Affiliate Blog, Damien Senn and finally Ray Algar.

What is it about farms, Heathers and small businesses making the most of social media?

Heather from Eie Flud, a natural handmade toiletries and botanical perfume company based on a farm in Leicestershire, has been blogging for well over 18 months.  It’s a blog that’s been in my RSS reader for the last 7 months.  And I discovered today that she also has a podcast with her son, the Saturday Boy. 

Very odd, I hear you cry.  Well no, not at all.  Like many of the best blogs Heather gets a chance to let us into some of the secrets of her trade and the trials and tribulations of running the business.  Her writing and her personality on the podcast, like that of Heather Gorringe at Wiggly Wigglers, just makes you want to read and listen.  How often can you say that about a business?

The fact that Heather will openly talk about a disastrous soap batch and embarrassing failed demonstrations in front of some important ladies of Leicestershire, is the stuff that blogs are made of.  Its also the stuff that makes small business blogging worth while for the business.  It establishes trust and a personal connection with people you’d never normally be able to reach face-to-face.  Pretty important for a mail order business.

Not only that, but without a shadow of a doubt Heather gets my award for one of the best blog posts of the year!  Take a look at this extraordinary insight into an extraordinary soap.

Tags: Eie Fluid, soap, podcast, small business blog