BBC’s Virtual Revolution
Tonight I, along with almost everyone who is driven by the www, tuned into the first episode of the BBC's Virtual Revolution programme, presented by Aleks Krotoski. Not a history of the world wide web as many people expected it to be but a thematic look at how the internet and the www is affecting the world socially.
But the most obvious evidence of the social impact is how quickly the #bbcrevolution tag trended on Twitter. That we now have the means for so many in a world wide arena to comment and interact live as we watch is surely one of the greatest changes that it has facilitated. To me this not just adds, but multiplies the value of watching such a programme. I was able to comment, engage in debate and learn from others knowledge, stopping me from being solely dependant upon the progamme makers version of events.
So if you're not using Twitter already, you're missing out, sign up, download tweetdeck and, instead of just consuming TV, enter the debate.
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January 30, 2010 at 10:00 pm | General, Social Media | 4 comments
The big online questions
The secret of success in anything is to ask some questions first, to make the best use of your website and e-business you need to make sure that you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it!
Doing business online may be new but the secrets to website success are the age old business maxims - clear communication of the benefits of working with you and making it easy and enjoyable for potential and current customers to do business with you.
So what questions should you ask?
Why do you have, or want to have a website?
Its very easy to decide to build a website just because all your competitors are! While this may be one of many valid reasons it should never be a reason on its own, and definitely not excuse to basically copy the exact same way of doing your website.
So, to answer this question you need to ask some more!
Who do you want to reach with your website?
Is it existing customers, new customers, journalists, financial backers, suppliers? Profile them, understand them, create content for them.
Where are your audience?
Just having a website is no longer enough. Social media, focused search and many other changes in the online world means you need to find out where your audience are and start the relationship there. And don’t forget the offline world, is your website address on everything you do?
What are your audience looking for?
We are all guilty of using buzzwords and your expert knowledge of your industry can often mean making wrong assumptions about what potential customers will search for us with. Ask your current customers the words they would search for, try and find the uniqueness of your business and target it in your search.
What’s your aim?
Having a clear aim will allow you to judge the success or failure of your website.
What do you want say and offer to your chosen audience?
Once you have established who the website is reaching out to you can create a far more targeted effort in making sure that you say and offer the right things to that audience.
But there is a key question to ask in parallel to this:
What do you want your chosen audience to say and offer to you?
The key mistake many businesses make is to thing off their website as online brochure with a chance perhaps to put a bit more information on and to avoid spending so much on their next corporate brochure. But the key benefit of a website and all online business is the improved communication it can offer to both parties. How many people have bought something from Amazon, but before buying it have read the customer reviews of the product. Both parties can benefit from such information, the customers can make more informed decisions and Amazon can see if a product is particularly popular or incredibly bad and make a stocking decision accordingly.
But a website's two way communication needn’t just be business to consumer.
Can your website do more?
How can your website plug the gaps and improve your company’s performance and efficiency in every way possible?
- Have you considered what it is that you could put on your website that might perhaps reduce the number of phone calls, and therefore time wasted, to your sales desk before you make a sale?
- Or maybe the calls for copies of invoices or maybe how a project is developing.
- Maybe your customers or suppliers would like to know how their account stands at any time.
- Could you offer downloads of manuals or help guides to existing customers.
- Re-ordering based on previous orders
- Stock level information if you warehouse goods for a client.
- If you offer post-sales support have a fill-in form that collates all the necessary information to be able to make an informed support response.
For a couple of months perhaps just keep a log of every bit information that you get called or emailed about and see if that could be offered on your website.
By answering this question you can better resolve who you target audience is and how you can communicate with them.
How do I stop bounce?
Looking good!
Your website should not be a stand alone item with no regard for your company’s overall appearance and identity. Branding and identity are becoming an all important element of your company’s success or failure.
Wally Ollins, a bit of an expert on branding, states that in the future a company’s brand or identity may be its most valuable asset. If this is the case and the website can be one of the most effective tools for interacting with your customers then make sure that it looks and says the right things about you. Many people seem to forget all about design, quality and a companies individuality when it comes to their website and are quite happy with bland, amateur or templated sites. They are missing the point. Increasingly today, the website is a prospective customers first or maybe even only interaction with you as a business. If a time wasting flash movie intro, poor navigation or inconsistent design lets them down, then the internet quickly lets them go elsewhere. If the letter or brochure they then receive from you, or even the phone call or email, don’t follow the same style in both appearance and style of writing and character then they will feel let down and a break may appear in the chain to making that relationship that sells.
So make sure that your website does and says the right things about you!
Feeling good
Make sure that at every step of the user experience your audience feel confident that they are getting what they are looking for, that their order will be successful and they will succeed in their aims.
So now here’s the challenge:
Have you asked these questions of yourself about your company and its use of the web?
If so, are you:
- Making optimum use of the internet to improve your customers experience of you making your business leaner?
- Truly integrating your website into your overall marketing and communication mix?
- Prepared to go away today and investigate exploring at least one of the ideas mentioned to improve your business’ performance?
On that note I trust you have found this useful, I have only been able to scratch the surface of what is possible but I hope you will be inspired to go away and turn your website from an online brochure to a fully effective business tool.
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January 19, 2010 at 8:45 pm | General | No comment
Disaster Recovery
by Ian Cutler
"SMBs will go out of business if they cannot get to their data in the first 24 hours after a crisis." - Gartner
You would be surprised at how many small and medium businesses do not take Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity seriously. I think I can safely assume most, if not all, businesses are taking backups of some description, if not now is a good time to start! A backup is all well and good but there are additional factors to take into account which are often overlooked:
1 What data does the backup contain? Is it just a daily backup of company and user data?
2 Is the backup schedule set up to get the most effective snapshot of your system?
3 Is the backup being taken offsite?
4 How quickly can the systems be back-up and running?
5 Can you be sure of a full recovery?
Having a backup is only a small part of a Disaster Recovery plan.
The Scary Bit
Disaster Recovery Statistics* 43% will never re-open * Less than 50% of all organisations have a business continuity plan |
The Disaster Recovery statistics do not take into account the costs involved while your systems are down.
Downtime Costs
Source: Information Age |
Coupling the costs incurred during the downtime of a disaster with the possibility of never being able to recover and restore all the data then this can be a costly exercise to a business - especially if a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan is not in place.
The Disaster Recovery Plan
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity should not be confused with each other. Disaster Recovery usually relates to the IT infrastructure, systems and data and is a part of the Business Continuity plan. Business Continuity is usually the term given to a company’s overall survival strategy in the event of a disaster. Although separate they are not mutually exclusive and the Disaster Recovery plan should be worked on in parallel with any Business Continuity plan.
As mentioned earlier it is not enough to just have a backup, a business needs to know the importance of the data being backed up, the priority of the data, the cost of downtime and the cost of data loss. A Disaster Recovery Plan will not only address all the details but will save your company money should the unthinkable happen. It is better to be pro-active and not reactive.
1. Get to know what it is that keeps your business going.
The first stage of the Disaster Recovery Plan is to look at what data your company houses and prioritise it’s importance to your business. Are emails the top of your list? Users and company work on a file server? Or do you have a large database of client and financial data? The idea is to have knowledge of your company’s data, where it stored, how your business interacts with it and how you would cope without it.
2. Calculate the cost of downtime.
This part requires a look at the cost to the business of the data being unavailable for significant amount of time. The cost is not just calculated in financial loss but also in loss of business and other criteria ie employee, customer, legal, and obligations.
3. Work out what is the best backup solution and schedule for your systems.
Not all your data will have the same backup requirements. For example a weekly backup, which is fine for server System State, certainly isn’t going to be enough for a company with a large file server or business critical databases. Likewise a backup which creates a continuous mirror of data would be overkill for a weekly System State snapshot. An appropriate schedule and backup solution needs to be implemented to make sure all avenues are covered.
Businesses running 7x24x365, such as hotels, which have few opportunities for backup windows should consider implementing a continuous protection replication backup solution.
4. Remove the backed up data from the building.
This may seem obvious but if there is a fire, flood or structural damage to the building there is a very good chance the backup media will be damaged along with the IT equipment. Removing the backup media offsite in rotation will certainly be of massive benefit if the business has to relocate to temporary or new premises.
There are online backup solutions available which backup systems over the Internet and allow for restoration via download. These can be very useful in recovering accidentally deleted files but a full recovery can be a very slow process.
5. Run and test the Disaster Recovery Plan.
Making sure your Disaster Recovery plan works is the final part. Keeping a watchful eye on your backups is a must as sometimes servers crash or the scheduler for whatever reason doesn’t start. It is foolish to set the backup schedule and sit back!
Evolving the Disaster Recovery plan as your business evolves and testing the solution will make sure that in the event of a disaster the cost to your business and disruptions are minimal.
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November 25, 2009 at 4:43 pm | Business Technology | No comment
Inspiring and humbling - The Prince’s Trust Awards
I had the privilege today of presenting the Award for Enterprise at the West Midlands Prince's Trust Awards. The stories from the young people, the difficulties they have overcome and the new businesses and community initiatives they have created were humbling and inspiring.
Starting and running a business is never easy, but with the help of the Prince's Trust, many young people do just that. Last year the Prince's Trust helped 41,324 young people make a difference in their lives last year.
I presented the Federation of Small Business Enterprise Award to Claire and Kate who set up Teme Valley Care in May 2008. Teme Valley Care provides care services for the elderly and disabled in Worcestershire. There were also five other finalists, all who deserve recognition for success against the odds - Lissa Dobson - Mugz4U, Ben and Michael Dyer - Altogether Company, Barkhad Hassan - The Hub, Kwayera Simpson - City Headwear, Mehmet Zamur - Mehmet's Barbers.
The Prince's Trust are always looking for volunteers to mentor the young people on the programmes, so if you've got some spare time in your diary, why don't you see if you can make a difference?
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November 24, 2009 at 9:56 pm | Business Thinking, General | No comment
New website for Birmingham Business Breakfast Club
I regularly attend a networking breakfast in Birmingham which is the perfect fit for me, it's informal, entertaining and has some great speakers. I've been responsible for the website and e-newsletter for a little while now and decided it was time for a refresh, so yesterday we finished all the coding work and here you have it - http://www.bbbc.biz
Would love your feedback, and if you're in the Birmingham area, why not pop along one month?
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