If you have read my blogs over the last couple of years, you will know that I hold a particular view of the “recession”; it was patchy, not universal. Its impact ranged from the catastrophic (if you were in house building, car manufacturing, or banking), to the liberating (with interest rates at an all time low, many households were between £100 and £150 a month better off). Public money was drying up, but private/personal money was plentiful.

Reliance on public funding has become an increasingly high risk strategy. I speak from personal experience as the ex-treasurer of an excellent provider of arts education which closed due to withdrawal of its core funding. Other organisations I know well are also starting to think the unthinkable – what if we can’t rely on public funding anymore?

So what is Plan B?

Well, I think public funding will become increasingly scarce, and with the hoops to jump through and numerous forms to complete, it will become harder to maintain.

There has been an interesting debate on LinkedIn to do with factoring as a way of improving cashflow. What caught my eye was a comment that said “payment terms has, and never will, kill a good idea”. I see this as a clarion call to every organisation that has a good idea – if it’s that good, someone will pay for it.

I answered the call by saying my name and saying “Good afternoon”.

They seemed a little put out that I hadn’t greeted them personally – had I perhaps even deleted them from my phone list? Fortunately we quickly glossed over this, and got down to catching up on our respective news, and discussing a potential business idea.

But it got me thinking, is there an accepted way to greet someone on the phone when you know it’s them? Do you say their name?  Would you still be as informal if you hadn’t spoken to them for several months? Do you regularly clear out your contacts list?

I guess there is no right or wrong, but I’d be really interested to know what you do…

Some lead, some follow – the world has always been this way. But what are the leaders trying to achieve? As a self employed person even I have to balance the “doing” with the “pioneering”.

But to what end. When I am no more, what will be left? What impact will I have made? Will the world be a better place?

The burden of responsibility rests on us all. Philosophers have always maintained that every one of us has the power to make a difference. It is not good enough to look around and expect someone else to make the difference for us. I agree with this.

I was recently introduced to a remarkable book called “The Tipping Point”. Its premise is that big things often happen as the result of the smallest of things. It is rarely possible to know what that small thing is until afterwards.

Standing still and waiting for everyone else to do something is not helping.

Is it your turn to be the tipping point?

The vast majority of comments emphasised complex and (to be fair) quite interesting ideas about how to get the best out of your website. But I felt they missed the point. Most businesses are run by hard working individuals who have not got time to understand and implement subtle marketing ploys.

Which brings me to the question of how you eat an elephant. The answer is, of course, a mouthful at a time. To try and take too big a bite out of a problem leaves you with bad indigestion.

You need a website for two reasons, to increase your brand awareness, and to generate sales, and not necessarily both at the same time. Whatever tactics you use to achieve your goal need to be SMART (Google this if you can’t remember the acronym!).

I believe that life is complicated enough without making it harder than it needs to be.

The next time you want to make your business better, talk to someone who can talk to you about it in simple “plain English”.

Identify the problem, break it into manageable chunks, and deal with it! Life is hard enough, without it being taxing.

I can’t remember where I heard this, but as regular readers will know, good phrases tend to stick in my head until they pop out here on my blog.

There are many people who will tell you what is going to happen, some will quite happily charge you for the advice. I have no idea where many get their insight from and, as with all predictions, they are often wrong, or were so woolly in the first instance that they try to argue that black is white.

I forget, are we heading for a new ice age, or global warming?

I am not discounting the value of forecasts, but their usefulness lies in the accuracy of the assumptions they are based on. There is not much difference between an uncertain stream of income, and a high pressure zone wandering aimlessly across the Atlantic Ocean towards Europe.

To you give yourself the best possible chance of coming out ahead of the rest, regularly test the assumptions you base your forecast on.

It’s never the weather that is wrong; it’s what you are wearing.

It is free (no cost), but it does require an investment of time. On this basis it might be worth thinking of it as an “instead of”, not an “as well as” means of communication.

It relies on you being informative and interesting. If you fulfil these criteria your audience will find you, like you, and follow you (read what you say). If you are pushy, people won’t follow you.

Twitter communicates to everyone who wants to follow you – so one message reaches a far greater audience than a single telephone call or email can. If someone likes what they read, they can forward the message to everyone that is following them.

What particularly differentiates Twitter as a mean of communication is the way that serendipity plays a part. More so than any other medium, it works through referral, over which you have little or no control.

Twitter is used by everyone, from teenagers, to CEO’s of major blue chip corporations. Your next major client, or customer, may just be looking for you on Twitter…

• Your online network is not the same as your personal address book.
• Don’t add technology to the way you do things, change the way you do things when you know what the technology can do.
• Social Media is about sharing; it won’t work if you are selfish.
• Accept the fact that there are those who already know their way around Social Media (Digital Natives), if you are new on the scene you are a Digital Immigrant, and it is incumbent on you to learn the language and customs.
• That said, it is up to you whether you abide by the established language and customs.
• The 5 steps involved: Arrive, Listen, Ask, Provide, Advise. In that order!

As with all forms of media, from the first printing press to twitter, there are those who just don’t get it, and those who do. There are those who use it well, and those who don’t.

Blogging is a relatively new medium that might yet have its place in history, but that place has to be fought for and proven. Twas ever thus.

I believe it can be a force for good, and Jo Geary’s eloquent support is key to its survival.
http://www.joannageary.com/2009/05/13/qit8-im-sick-and-tired-of-this-infernal-blog-debate/

Realising the audience was at best sceptical (with a couple of exceptions!), and at worst cynical, I used the following images.

• Plain website = shop window, hopefully directing you to the door in.
• Blogging on your website = shop front glass now removed, allowing you to talk to potential customers, and for them to talk back (for example by leaving comments).
• Social Media (such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) = you have left your shop and are walking about sharing your ideas, and encouraging others to talk about them as well (not always with you present).

It is a bit blunt, but seemed to get the key messages over:

1. Social Media is not something that only happens online – it’s a mesh of physical meetings and online activities.
2. Ideas that are spread through groups of people are far more powerful than ideas delivered to individuals.
3. Real engagement is when people do things for you that you didn’t ask them to.
4. Learn to lose some control – in return for greater reach.

With thanks to Steve Bridger (http://www.stevebridger.com/) for his insights…

The first thing that occurred to me was a simple excel spreadsheet that shows how the P&L links to the Balance Sheet, which links to the Cashflow, which links to the P&L. You get the idea – its a neat pro-forma.

Then there is my list of the various kinds of accountants that businesses use – there are more than you might immediately think. This is helpful because you need someone to look after all aspects of your business’s accounts and it’s easy to overlook something…

Then I have a list of accounting software packages I know, either through using them, or reviewing them, or simply on recommendation – handy when discussing potential changes.

I have a great contacts database, but that’s worth a little too much to just give away…

I keep wondering about a FAQ page for my website. Is there an accounts question you always wanted to know the answer to?

So at the moment I haven’t got anything to give away. Should I have something? Is what I do too intangible? Does a freebie make a website more attractive? What would you like?