2009 Recession busters?
January 25, 2009 by admin
Ran in into Alan King, who we have blogged about before, and he was a bit full of gloom and doom. We all get a bit like this don’t we? Alan has many many contacts in Banking, Industry and Engineering…… as far as he can tell, we are all a bit “stuffed”, and possibly for a long time to come.
It can’t be all that bad? Can it?
So it was time for some Google research to find out who will be surviving the recession. Below you will find, I think, some very interesting resources. A “wordle” was a new idea for me 
- Small biz will do well
- A recession buster wordle!!! (A Wordle?)
- A very good explanation of sector, stock market and economic interplay via a visual and graphs.
- Five sectors that can survive. (Not what I expected!)
- Online ad sector should do well
- An Indian perspective
- A discussion on Linked-in
mebeli
So whilst we are being “stuffed” some “stuff” is actually happening. My view on all of this?
We need to be more like speed boats than oil tankers. By this I mean, small and nimble, always flexible, always adapting and most importantly we need to be able to demonstrate value to our clients.
The power of the web to spread the word…
January 17, 2009 by Mike.p
Now I am sure that everyone has heard at some point something similar to: “You must start blogging! It’s an incredible tool to spread the word!” and equally we are all constantly hearing things like “Twitter can project your voice instantly to huge audiences.”
Well I want to share a couple of examples that I’ve come across. Yesterday, we probably all heard about the amazing job done by a brave American Airlines pilot, dumping his plane into the Hudson river without any loss of life. What is different though, is a large number of you probably heard about it first through twitter. It turns out that one of the first ferry’s on the scene happened to have a man by the name of Janis Krums. Mr. Krums by luck had an iPhone on him and was in his twitter application so as the Ferry approached the plane to help the survivors he took a picture which went straight onto twitpic (the photo part of twitter) and the word was out…beating any professional reporter even though this is NEW YORK!
Now at least I can say that Mr. Krums didn’t take his micro-blogging quite as seriously as a certain Mike Wilson did in December. Mr. Wilson was actually in a plane crash and twittered updates throughout the entire ordeal leaving some to question the state of mind of a man that is trying to save his own life. The initial message of “Holy bleep bleep - I was just in a plane crash!” was followed with peaches like “Ugh … My glasses fell off in the mass exodus getting off the plane .. Can’t see very well” and “Continental keeping us locked up at the presidents club until they can sort everything out. Won’t even serve us drinks. :(” (Another link but be warned of no censoring!) Now this is obviously the other extreme side of the scale, but it is facinating as news agencies will give their right arms for eyewitness and survivor accounts. Well I would be scared if I were them, because now these eyewitnesses and survivors have their own voice without the need to use a news agency. Powerful stuff!
Lastly I want to share with you a little story that demonstrates the power of blogging. If I told you that I could create life with a blog you probably wouldn’t believe me. What if I told you, not only could I create life, but I could do it in the form of a prodigal 16-year old Moldovan football star that will be the next big signing for a team like Arsenal or Real Madrid. I kid you not…it’s happened. Now fortunately the scandal has been uncovered as a clever ruse - they still don’t know who was behind the scam or even the motivation - but through a series of blog postings, an update to Wikipedia and some other clever uses of imagination, certain news agencies were fooled into thinking Masal Bugduv was the next big thing, even going so far that the Times listed him number 30 in their list of fledgling superstars. Of course this has left a lot of red faces, and even yesterday (24 hours after it was discovered to be a scam), the cleanup operation had begun and poor old Masal is being wiped out - although an amusing apology can be found at the bottom of this page from goal.com. Well it just shows the power that each and everyone of us have to communicate to the world…so why not start using it?
The Paradiddles way to survive
January 12, 2009 by admin
Paradiddles were our first customer, way back in 2003. The internet was humming, Ebay was a real opportunity for small business owners and things looked good.
In 2007 and 2008 the wheels came off for retailers on the high street. Competition was intense and margins were tough. By the summer of 2008 the writing was on the wall.
Smart retailers like Paradiddles took tough decisions and they changed their focus. Here is what Paradiddles have to say about 2009.
Paul,
My prediction, keep mean, keep lean, go back to basics, order on a need to have basis, batten down the hatches, but keep positive …..
many thanks,
Phil.
Resource: Social Media Marketing slideshow
January 11, 2009 by admin
Brilliant! After a few twitter conversations, received this slideshow which puts all the web, web2.0, social media stuff into perspective.
Thanks Jo, thanks CJ
Amazing testimonial
January 6, 2009 by Paul Imre
What an amazing testimonial! The above image was taken from Linked-in and shows a bit of Jo’s Bio. See more on Jo and Rooi Ltd here. Plastered all over linked-in! Still can’t believe it.
The missing piece of info here is that Jo helped us launch into twitter _and_ passed on a good few people to track _and_ just helped me with some research to help an Imre client to make sense of Social Media. (When I say some research, I mean solid pointers and notes from experience of stuff to try and avoid.)
THANK YOU JO!
Where to start with Social Media?
January 5, 2009 by Paul Imre
To start with Social Media you need to dip a toe in somewhere. Then you need to listen. Here is a blog article that came to me via linked in.
All businesses understand the power of networking. Social Media enables networking at another level and the costs are low!
Twitter and productivity?
January 3, 2009 by Paul Imre
There is an old joke that talks about the creation of Europe. It goes something like this.
1. The French wanted a Europe to stop the Germans from constantly invading.
2. The Germans needed a Europe due to Panzers being out of fashion.
3. The Brits wanted to join Europe after being kicked out of all the colonies.
4. The Irish wanted to join because the Brits must have known something!
As far as Social Media goes I am a bit like the Irish. I have been watching the dudes from the Social Media Mafia as I think they must know something. If the Irish can join Europe, well then I can join Twitter.
BUT - my biggest worry about all of this stuff has been around productivity. So I asked that question on Twitter and this is what I got back:
So I held these beliefs that Social Media must have a huge cost. Loudmouthman put a spanner in this line of thought only after a few seconds of me having raised the issue.
If you have read Clive Woodward’s book on winning, you will know that rather than trying to raise performance by 100%, using one method, you are much better off improving 100 things by 1%. In terms of Social Media the maths may actually look more like this:
audio RT @i_paul @audio One person loses say 10% but a hundred people gain by one or two percent? The bar moves up for everyone. Thats cool
So time to be more like the Social Media Mafia peeps. Time to engage and take action.
