Posts for June 2012

July - the time to celebrate local, independent retailers

There are more than 169,000 independent retail businesses in the UK, equating to 92% of all retail businesses. They form a valuable and treasured part of many communities. They are an integral part of local economies and contribute greatly to local employment.

Often it’s the independent retailers who provide a route to market for up-and-coming designers and producers. Retailers also need the services of many other local businesses – accountants, lawyers, shop fitters, electricians, decorators, printers – so they’re an integral part of the local economic eco-system.

Welcome to Independent Retailer Month 2012

July is Independent Retailer Month. ANY Independent business that serves consumers, be they online only, market trader, shop-based or multi-channel, can take advantage of this global “shop local” campaign. Consumer-facing businesses are encouraged to run events, promotions and activities throughout July to celebrate, with their customers, what they offer to their local community.

Independent Retailer Month highlights the important role smaller, local, independent retailers play in the communities they serve, the local economy they contribute to, and in the retail sector as a whole.

Independent Retailer Month was launched to address growing international concerns about the homogenisation of our towns and the drain of customers from our local centres to out-of-town retail parks, shopping centres and online competition. The initiative aims to:

• Impact the independent retail sector globally with relevant support, expertise and insights
• Connect consumers and communities with local retailers, reminding them of the benefits of shopping local
• Engage small business organisations, networks and thought leaders to promote the importance of independent retail to the global, national and local economies.

To kick-start Independent Retailer Month there will be a fantastic launch event on Sunday 1 July. This day-long event will take place at Cranmore Park near Solihull and will feature keynotes from award-winning independent retailers and retail experts, as well as 1-2-1 “ask the expert” sessions.

Those who attend will be able to learn and network with other retailers, experts and organisations whose remit it is voice their needs and wants right up to national government level.

How can Retailers get involved with Independent Retailer Month?

At the end of the day it’s over to you. The campaign gives retailers and consumer-facing businesses “permission” to create as much excitement as possible around the month – you are only limited by your own imagination!

Speak to other independent retailers and consumer-facing businesses in your local community. Let them know about the campaign (if they don’t already) and discuss how you can work together to leverage Independent Retailer Month to attract more customers from your local community.

Contact your local newspaper or radio station. With all the focus on town centres and high streets, thanks to the government’s Portas review, your local press should want to report on how local businesses are fighting back.

Focus on re-engaging with the local shopper, drawing them back into their local shop. And by delivering a great shopping experience you can remind them what fantastic smaller retailers there are right on their doorstep.

Clare Rayner's book, The Retail Champion: 10 steps to retail success, will be published on 3rd July.

Tickets for Independent Retailer Month 2012 Launch Conference cost £60 (Inc VAT). Register here. Find out more about Independent Retailer Month 2012.

 

Six ways to better attract 'Millennials' with your job description

Most job descriptions are awful. They make the recruiting business sound boring. They make the work sound tedious. And they all sound pretty much the same, citing the need for a “self-starter” who’s a “team player” and whatnot.

This could be a real problem for employers when they try to hire “Generation Y Millennials”. While some managers and recruiters are fed up with the stereotypically whiny Millennials, Generation Y is predicted to comprise nearly 75% of the world’s workforce by 2025, according to the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation. And while some of Gen Y have “failed to launch” amidst the Great Recession, the best of them are in high demand.

Businesses should embrace the unique characteristics of Gen Y workers for the future success of their businesses. Not only are Millennials technically savvy in terms of IT, social media and marketing, but they’re also hard working, team players and focused on acceptance and relationship building within the organisation.

And we can’t forget to mention that according to a 2009 Monster.com survey, 37% of employers reported that "work-life balance and flexibility" are the most motivating factors for Generation Y.

Businesses can start by using job descriptions to court the most-talented Millennials:

1 Tell them why they should want to work for you. This is your opportunity to make job-seekers fall head over heels in love with you and the vacancy. Millennials don’t just want to crank out work and check-off items on a to-do list. They want to love the business they work for, and you can use your job description to get them excited.

2 Tell them why the position matters. Understanding how my job contributes to the organisation is one of the biggest motivators for me and my Gen Y colleagues. Make sure the job descriptions describes where the position falls within your business, how the candidate could make an impact and where it fits in the grand scheme of things.

3 Talk about what the job could do for them. Aside from a salary and benefits, how would they benefit from the position? What skills might they gain; what professional connections can they make; and why would this position make them more desirable candidates when they start looking for their next jobs?

4 Tell them about your creative benefits. Does your business offer any extra, exciting benefits, such as flexible work hours or gym membership? Mention those creative perks (no matter how small) in your job description.

5 Tell them about your vision for the position. While Millennials may not envision working in the same job for decades, it’s important that we work for a business where we could envision ourselves growing and contributing for several years. We want the job description to reflect that same sort of vision for the candidate who ultimately fills the position.

6 Tell your story, quickly. Your business has a story. Tell a brief version of it within your job description to quickly convey your mission and how it came to be.

Jennifer King is an HR Analyst for SoftwareAdvice.com, a company that compares and reviews HR and recruiting software. She blogs about trends, technology and best practices in human resources.

Four social media tips for small businesses

As a small-business owner, you are busy and your time is limited. Social media is ubiquitous and may seem like a great way to communicate with hundreds (or maybe even thousands) of people really quickly, but it will only work if you do it right.

1 Know your audience

The first thing you want to do is figure out who you want to reach – new customers; existing customers; past customers or a more targeted group? For new customers, specify as much about your ideal client as you can. Are they male or female? How old are they? What hobbies do they have? What social media do they use regularly? There are, of course, more details you can add, but you must build a picture of your perfect punter.

If you want to talk to existing customers, find out what social networking sites they use the most. You can make free surveys online, hold focus groups, ask questions on relevant forums and more.  If they don’t spend a lot of time on Twitter, there’s no point in creating an account. Your target audience should dictate the social network(s) you are on, so once you know where they like to hang out, it’s easier to establish a goal.

2 What’s your goal?

You should know exactly what you want to achieve. Do you just want to provide another channel of communication between your business and your customers? Are you trying to increase awareness of your brand? Are you looking for another way to distribute great content? There are loads of things you can do with social media, but don’t try to do them all. Identify your most important goal and focus on that.   

Whatever your goal, it’s a good idea to incorporate your social media activities into everything you do. Web design software makes it easy to integrate social elements on your website, and you can talk about your social media accounts in your newsletter, as well as list the social media links on your marketing materials. It also works the other way. Use your social media channel(s) to deliver relevant, useful information to your customers.   

3 Plan your time

How much time can you commit to social media? If you can only spare a few hours a week, you may not see much of a return for your time. In fact, having a poor social presence can be more damaging to your brand than not having any – it will seem like you’re ignoring your customers. You’ll need to work on your account consistently to build momentum and a reputation. 

If the responsibility will be shared among two or more people, consider creating some basic guidelines so everyone knows what is expected of them. Among other things, it’s important for everyone to use the same tone of voice to maintain brand consistency.

Much like Rome, nothing awesome is built in a day. If you’re expecting to see positive results in a few weeks, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Allow at least six months before evaluating how well you are doing, then decide whether you want to continue.

4 Monitor your success

You should regularly monitor the impact of all of your marketing – including any social media activities. How you do that will relate directly to the goal you set. If your goal was to offer a fast way for customers to ask you questions (to reduce incoming support emails and calls), find out if it worked. There are a lot of different calculations you can do that involve percentages, comparisons to last period’s figures, and time spent per query, or, you could use the built-in analytics in your social media accounts.

However, you might get a better understanding of how you are serving your customers by simply asking them. Again, you can make use of free survey software, emails, focus groups, etc. If your customers love the new social media support option (and it’s actually being used enough so you can devote less resources to your traditional support methods), it is a good idea to keep it.

The underlying key points are these: while social media is free, it takes a lot of your (or someone else’s) time to research, plan, promote, execute and assess your activities. You’ll want to see a return on investment at some point, so you should only do it if you are going to do it well.

• Find out more about Serif, award-winning developer of products such as website design software WebPlus. 

Passwords: how to keep yours safe

Passwords are hugely topical at the moment, of course, after hackers were alleged to have leaked more than six million member passwords from social networking website LinkedIn. You might even have had to change yours as a result.

The truth is, we’re over a decade into the 21st century and people STILL don’t ‘get’ passwords. In the online world we’re increasingly asked to come up with unique strings of letters and numbers in an abstract way: “between 8 and 16 characters in length and containing at least one capital letter and number”. We’ve also got lazy.

Many users reuse their passwords in multiple places, each time dramatically increasing the chances of it being discovered. Not only that, but we also have a terrible habit of trying to use dictionary words with numbers instead of letters. “3lephanT” for example would be considered secure for many services, but in fact it’s all too easy for a computer armed with a dictionary and a list of common substitutions to crack.

The alternatives to DIY

The common alternative to allowing users to come up with their code is creating one for them. This solution, while much better than letting people invent their own password, creates its own problems. People underestimate their ability to remember passwords and fearing exclusion, they note them down somewhere. We all know how insecure this is, so how do we introduce a better system?

Try talking to your employees; educate them on the implications for the business of insecure logins. Then together, come up with a workable solution.

You can use security software that includes a password vault in the cloud, or subscribe to one separately, eg LastPass or KeePass. These apps will even offer to generate strong, random passwords for you.

Another option is to encourage the storage of passwords in a physical form, the challenge is to do so securely. This could be as simple as locking a notebook with important passwords in a safe or as complex as creating a system whereby passwords are shown as innocent notations in a dictionary or other book. For example, to keep tabs on my StartUp Donut password I noted down either a reminder, or the password itself in or around “doughnut” in my Oxford English Dictionary. You can take this idea further by introducing ciphers, choosing passwords based on words in the surrounding text or even by choosing a word that’s not directly associated with the subject matter.

Or you could stick with nonsense passwords but encourage your employees to take care in remembering and selecting them. Often phrases can be reduced to initials and thus remembered without too much hassle (or the reverse can be true, a mnemonic can allow users to convert a forgettable mess into a memorable sentence).

Perhaps security might be better served by, instead of insisting on a hybrid string of characters, encouraging longer chains of words. This page from XKCD was intended as a joke but it illustrates the points I’m trying to make clearly.

If you’re really interested in this subject there are a couple of articles you can read. The first is the recent study by Joseph Bonneau on ‘The science of guessing’ where he looks at the passwords of 70 million people and uses their (anonymised) data to draw some interesting conclusions. While Fareez Ahamed has delved into some of the leaked Twitter passwords and provides an insightful statistical analysis of his findings.

If you’ve found an effective way of keeping logins safe, then please leave a comment.

John Sollars is MD of printer ink retailer Stinkyink.com

The Apprentice: The final reckoning

And now, the end is near, and so we face the final curtain ... yes folks, it’s the final of The Apprentice.

Perhaps we can judge the success of this series by the way time seems to have passed since it all began. Ve-ry ve-ry slow-ly. This one does seem to have dragged a little, it has to be said.

But Nick, Jade, Tom and Ricky should be congratulated on making it this far. Now they face the ultimate challenge — the interviews. Sweat will pour. Blood will be spilt. Seemingly rock-solid egos will crumble. Bring it on!

The candidates have to present their CVs, personal statements and business plans to the four horsemen of the apocalypse that are Claude Littner, Margaret Mountford, Mike Soutar and Matthew Riley.

If you’re in any doubt about the horror show that is to come, this is what Claude Littner says about Ricky. “I spent a sleepless night with excitement at how I was going to rip him apart”. At which point, the other rottweilers snort their approval.

So let’s get to the juicy bits.

Ricky

His plan: A recruitment firm specialising in biotec and pharmaceuticals

Matthew Riley takes one look at his application and tells Ricky, “There are so many things in there that basically made me want to be sick”.

Margaret Mountford is more concerned about Ricky’s claims to be a business god — Thor to be precise. And Mike Soutar thinks it’s all show business, not real business. As they discuss Ricky’s wrestling, he asks, “Do people take you less seriously because they imagine you in lycra pants?”

But what does Claude Littner — the Simon Cowell of this process — think? “Your personal statement is the most crass, obnoxious, infantile personal statement that I’ve had the — not really pleasure — the opportunity of reading.”

But wait, Claude hasn’t finished. He adds: “However, I read your business plan and I was quite impressed.”

Nick

His plan: An online recipe-based food ordering service

Claude Littner thinks Nick’s plan looks like an academic exercise. He doesn’t even bother to lay into Nick, he just doesn’t care. Nick claims it will be as big as Google and Facebook — Claude says “dream on”.

When Nick tells Matthew Riley about his existing business — a successful venture that looks set to make a few million, Matthew is incredulous. Why is Nick even here? “Are you smoking something?” he asks.

Tom

His plan: A fine wine hedge fund that will be started with £25million of investors’ money.

Mike Soutar’s eyes light up when he discovers that this is Tom’s first ever job interview. But how has Tom managed to avoid interviews until now? He works with his father. “Are you a daddy’s boy?” asks Mike.

Tom tells Margaret that his nickname at university was BNOC — Big Name on Campus. By the look on her face, Margaret is definitely thinking of a name — but it’s not a very nice one.

Claude challenges Tom on his ability to raise the £25 million — “Can you raise the money? I say you can’t”. There’s not much Tom can say to that.

Jade

Her plan: A call centre specialising in debt solutions, energy suppliers and mobile phones. Classy.

Claude is not mad about Jade’s telemarketing concept. “That’s a pretty grubby little business you’re proposing,” he says.

Matthew grills Jade about her business education. It seems she’s forgotten something — that she got an N in her business A-level. An N, apparently, is a “near-miss” fail — a small detail that didn’t make it onto the CV.

Mike Soutar’s checking that Jade has bought all the domain names she needs for the business. She’s adamant that she owns them all — trouble is Mike has actually bought one of them the day before.

In the boardroom

Jade and Nick are quickly dismissed. So will it be Tom or Ricky?

“Is it necessary to come up with a load of old bullshit?” asks Lord Sugar as they discuss Ricky’s ridiculous bragging. That’s an easy one Lord S. No it’s not necessary in business. But I think you’ll find it’s a contractual requirement on reality TV.

The concerns about Tom include his age, his lack of experience, the fact that he has led a somewhat charmed existence and his very risky business plan.

So what kind of business is Lord Sugar looking to invest in? It turns out he’s after a safe bet. He says, “I’ve never done business with other people’s money” referring to Tom’s investment plan. And, it seems, he’s looking for the quiet life. “I’m a pensioner, I don’t want too much hard work”.

It’s a rather down-beat conclusion to a lack-lustre series.

Ricky — you’re hired.

Find out more about the candidates on the BBC Apprentice website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice

Highly recommended: Matt Edmondson’s hilarious Funny Bits video review on the Apprentice website.

Growing your following in Social Media

"How can I increase my following in Twitter?" or "How can I get more likes on my Facebook page?" are questions that many start-ups ask when they think about joining the social media world. People are obsessed with growing their following so that they can be seen to have tens of thousands of people following them, hoping that one or two percent may just buy when they ask. In my opinion, you should focus on the quality of your social media following rather the size of it.

However you choose to use social media, you must first have a way to measure your success in it. The first question is: Why do you want more followers?

Numbers give no real value in social media

Followers just for numbers' sake is not going to give you any value in social media. Any business should aim to build a list of really engaged followers rather than just looking to increase followers.

If you really want to grow your following in sites such as Twitter and Facebook, think about these four main activities below.  Following this strategy will increase your followers organically and build you an audience of people that are interested, who want to engage and maybe even buy from you:

Send out links to articles that you will write on your blog to show your expertise in your chosen industry

Not just sales messages and 'client wins this month'  type of posts, but real insight into what you do and how your knowledge can really make a difference in people's lives and businesses.

If you focus on this and deliver real value, then people will see you as an expert and want to come back for more, tell others about it and you will build huge credibility with your audience for what you do.

Go out of your way to help others in social media that are asking questions that you can answer

Using tools such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck allow you to connect your various social media accounts to desktop or mobile versions of these tools. They are social media management tools - giving you one place to use all your social media accounts at the same time, so that you don't have to log in to all of them, one after another.

Within both of these tools you can create columns with search criteria that will show you all the tweets or updates related to the terms you want to find.

For example, if you are a graphic designer you may want to set up search columns around the 10 most frequently asked questions about graphic design. If people ask questions such as "can anyone recommend a logo designer?" you would see this and be able to respond.

Avoid buying Likes and Followers

Avoid buying likes and followers from sites that offer this. This will just fill your accounts with lots of SPAM and they will be of no use. Instead focus on building a following or community of people that will listen and engage with what you have to say.

Aim to get people out of social media to your website or blog

Drawing people back to your hub (your website or blog) will get them away from social media. Social media is where conversations happen. People don’t go into social media to be sold to. Encourage people to read more about what you have to offer on your blog around which you can display your products and services that you have to offer. Then they can choose to engage with you after they see you are an expert in what you do.

Ant Hodges is the owner and managing director of HodgeNest, an SEO and Internet marketing company, and also mentors start-up business owners.