For those regular visitors, you will have noted some changes are taking place to the blog/website at present. Apart from the obvious, this is all in preparation for the launch of the new e-books which should happen this week if Paypal can get its finger out! You will see those additions very soon

Over the next few days, the site will gradually evolve and this stage of development will be complete. Your comments and feedback are, of course, always welcome. Thanks for being patient over the new books…they are on their way!

I’ve just tweeted this after someone shared it on Twitter. Its useful!

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business/

A fabulous book and worth the £8.99 price tag. Charles Leadbeater offers an insight into how companies might operate in the future as a result of the switch to mass innovation from the mass production of the past. As he admits, some businesses won’t be affected as much as others, but some of the concepts are challenging, thought provoking and downright fascinating. 

It’s got me thinking particularly about seeing a small business as a community not a team of people. If he is right and a culture of sharing is just around the corner, thank goodness for that, its about bloody time!

Not taking advantage of technological changes – Its here and here to stay. Using technology effectively is a common sense approach to ensuring you stay one step ahead. Using technology is essential. A basic requirement; electronic database of your customers can lead to your ability to design individual customer experiences for your top 20% of customers.

Technology can help stabilise your marketing budget and even bring a better return on investment. Emailers instead of hard copy newsletters. Blogs that allows content to be updated on a regular basis instead of static websites, social network sites leading to collaborative working with like-minded people even competitors. It can even build your brand equity by allowing your customers insight into the company’s culture. Not only that, but instead of just communicating with your customers you can have open, honest conversations with them.

When growth slows, you can usually pin the cause to one of the series of five reasons provided. Its not easy sustaining that growth over a long period of time and you certainly can’t do it on your own. It requires the business owner to renew their commitment to the businesses long-term purpose and seek out new opportunities or ways of doing things that will lead to capturing a new zest for growth.

An immense dose of leadership is required. It takes small business owners with courage, motivation and conviction, able to withstand criticism, to face their fears head on. Essentially, inspiring their company to rejuvenate its commitment to growth, even with severe challenges ahead.