Creative Agency Secrets

I have been mulling for a while about a post on the business networks that I belong to online and what they actually seem to"do" for me and my biz dev search for new customers.

Here's what I can tell you:

I belong to eCademy (31), Linked In (158), Plaxo Pulse (1,489)

The number of contacts I have on each is the number in brackets. I think this tells a story in itself!

Groups

I found the eCademy groups useful when promoting a client's business for them.  And I do like Nikki Pilkington's WDYKW group (who do you know who).   But neither has brought any new business directly to me. 

A couple have started 'conversations' but none were anything like the quality that would make me recommend them to you. [it is possible I haven't found a good group that matches my needs].  But people who choose to start and actively manage an online group, do tell me that it grows their profile enormously.

The LinkedIn groups are much more akin to the right type of people for me, including one called Social Media Mafia which I love!

Streaming content from other sources

I must confess that the Plaxo Pluse stream is really nice - good UI and lots of easily integrated data from other sources like Twitter, Flickr and blogs.

Ecademy has nothing like this and Linked In has 'network updates" but these are just activities among people I know on their platform.

Forums

I have a prejudice against people who spend a lot of time in forums
just answering questions, maybe clouded by the actions of a former
colleague, who could answer questions all day but never did any work!

I have successfully started conversations with companies who are looking for my type of skills which I have found in forums on these type of sites.

Connecting with others

All platforms make it easy to connect, I know Katy Howell has done well with Ecademy in the past when setting up her PR firm.  And let's face it, that is the reason these websites exist.  I suppose that I find more people I know on Plaxo and LinkedIn than Ecademy.  

I have made a business decision not to connect to people I don't know.  There are some hugely aggressive 'connectors' out there who claim to know thousands of others.  I never get anythign positive from them because they cannot know me properly and if they don't push useful stuff out (note T. Power Esq) I just ignore all their activities.  

The borderline is where people do know people that I do know.  Generally I still don't accept unless in their invitation email they say specifically why they want to connect with me.

But what do you think?  Are these useful Business Development tools? 

Reading more about the value of investments and innovation’s impact on your business.  Many marketers try hard to justify our work in financial terms and so may find this new article "What Happened to the Knowledge Economy" by Jonathan Haskel at Queen Mary College, University of London.

How do economies assess investment in intangible activities like R&D, Staff and management expertise and Advertising and market research.

The research found for every £1 spent on tangible assets another was spent on intangibles and that this has been growing faster than the rest of business output.  Advertising and market research has held steady at about 1% of total business output since 1995 and before then was between 0.5 and 1% (it’s hard to see on the published graph as it is a small, low proportion of the other categories).

So sadly, our work is dwarfed by computer software and "non-scientific R&D" who have grown hugely in the past 10 years as has Staff and Managerial expertise….. so those making money are businesses training managers, writing software and not really those doing Advertising and market research. 

But we probably knew that….. or did we?

(more…)

This is right up my street…. got a new client (hopefully) in this sector.  We we probably be there.
Energy 2.0

Energy 2.0
is a new energetic series of events in the UK bringing together the
industry innovators, smart investors, forward looking NGOs, strong
government leaders and media organisations who are playing a role in
shaping the next era of energy generation, management and efficiency.

In this the first event of its kind in the UK, Mashup aim is to
bring together senior professional individuals from the ‘cleantech’
industry (including microgeneration & renewables) with their peers
in the ‘Internet’ industry.

Just read a very insightful post from Atanu Dey on the shortcomings of officialdom on economic development and technology in India.

[Sidebar - I am reading up on India because one of my clients, Buffalo, works on outsourcing and that’s where a lot of business both in and out of Europe is coming for the outsourcing marketplace.] 

Now, way back, I worked with the AKRSP (Aga Khan Rural Support Programme) in northern Pakistan doing what was then called ‘bottom-up’ economic development in village communities.  Their work and some recent reading I did into Ernesto Sirolli’s  vision of  Enterprise Facilitation  aligns so closely to my personal view that the best way to enable people to improve the economic value of their lives (earn more, buy a house, feed your children, education etc) is to use the building block of small business as a lever.  I delight in the fact that my academic studies were about the economy and third world development (as it was then called) and now I have the skills to align and correlate my interests in both fields and, moreover, to actually help people to achieve this for themselves through my work as a consultant.  I love it!

Here’s the comment I put onto Atanu Dey’s post

This is fantastic stuff.
One resource you might want to look at in the context of ‘village information centres’ is the Sirolli Institute http://www.sirolli.co.uk/

I worked in mid 80s for AKRSP (Aga Khan Rural Support Programme) in northern Gilgit and the principles we worked to there are closely aligned with Ernesto Sirolli’s ideas. 

Now I’m a business consultant but the principles of using enterprise as a tool for economic development is the most rational I have ever seen.  And it works - in the first, second and third world!

Rebecca

And, as an aside, in browsing the Sirolli Instistute’s website, I find that they visited Cambridge in September 2006 and I missed the talk - darn.

Still, I signed up to their blog… which is more than many others have done.