Celebrating Womens Enterprise Day

As the UK and US celebrate Womens Enterprise Day today (17 Nov), it seems like a good opportunity to celebrate women in business and highlight the need for more support for female entrepreneurship. When we started Active Marketing & Design in 2006, we were fortunate to benefit from start-up help from organisations like the Womens Enterprise, Education and Training Union (WEETU) and Women in Rural Enterprise (WiRE), but their resources are sadly limited by continued funding cuts. Other organisations like Enterprising Women have offered free business support to women in Norfolk in the past but now charge an annual membership fee. As part of Women in Rural Enterprise, we were recently invited to make a representation to the Enterprise Minister, Mark Prisk MP, to showcase the success of women in business and highlight the types of support that we need from organisations such as WiRE.

According to BERR statistics, only 15% of the UK's 4.7 million enterprises are female-led. With commentators suggesting that public sector redundancies will hit women hardest as their (commonly) part time roles are first to be axed, this presents an excellent opportunity for women to start up a business with the right support. In my experience, women starting up in business need significant support to boost their confidence and encourage them to take the plunge. One to one advice, training and networking certainly helped us to believe in our abilities to run our marketing company. In the long term, female-led businesses are often more sustainable as we tend to have more conservative ambitions for growth and therefore are less likely to risk losing it all in the pursuit of financial success. Yet it is very difficult to quantify and recognise the contribution to the economy of the numerous female-owned microbusinesses, especially if they are home-based and fall beneath the VAT threshold.

We have supported a number of Norfolk's female-owned businesses to start up and grow through marketing activities such as branding, web design and advertising. Some examples of our successful female clients include:

Igloo Shoes
Karen Eason
Dare To Fly
Care Motoring
Adepta
The Retreat
Make it Count

We have to keep highlighting the importance of female entrepreneurship and can only hope that our current Government will recognise the importance of supporting women to make the first steps into business as part of the bigger economic picture.

Active Marketing & Design is a full service marketing & design company with offices in West Norfolk & Broadland. We specialise in supporting growing businesses in the rural economy through high impact design for print, cost-effective social media strategy & web design.

Networking Queen of Norwich

As the unofficial networking queen of Norwich, I seem to be asked with some degree of regularity to recommend networking events for people in business looking to raise their local profile. I can usually be relied upon to give a fairly frank appraisal of those that I have attended. Unfortunately I am not prepared to share those honest appraisals here but may give you some gems of wisdom in person if you ask nicely!

I thought I would share my latest list of Norfolk business networks, in no particular order before you go getting over-excited! Apologies in advance if I have missed anyone off but I think this list is probably still more up to date than the one in the press!

• Norfolk Netwalking - Monthly walks mixed with informal business networking www.norfolk-netwalking.co.uk

• Norwich Business Womens Network - Monthly lunches, contact Margaret Gotts 01603 751930 www.nbwn.co.uk

• The Womens Business Clubs – Kings Lynn www.thewomensbusinessclubs.com
• The Business Club www.the-businessclub.org Fortnightly evening meetings at Airport Hotel, Norwich plus social events. Contact kate[@]activemd.co.uk to come as a guest (free).

• Buy Local – Social Enterprise encouraging small businesses to trade with each other, approx quarterly meetings and events www.buylocalnorfolk.org.uk 01603 766166

• The Antidote Network - Monthly meetings at Holiday Inn Airport Hotel, quite friendly and informal www.theantidotenetwork.co.uk

• Mid Norfolk Enterprise Forum run by Conservative PPC George Freeman www.thenorfolkway.co.uk

• Norfolk Network - www.norfolknetwork.com 01603 663340 Monthly meetings

• Federation of Small Businesses www.fsb.org.uk and then follow links to regions.

• WEETU (Womens Enterprise, Education and Training Union) - www.weetu.org 01603 878343 Centre meetings approx quarterly, very friendly and informal plus a new professional network also recently started.

• Everywoman 0870 746 1800 www.everywoman.co.uk – Regional seminars

• Women in Business Forum - Contact Sharon O’Mahoney, Meetings around Thetford area www.wibforum.co.uk

• Enterprising Women - www.enterprising-women.org – occasional networking events

• Wire (Women in Rural Enterprise) - www.wireuk.org - friendly networks in Kings Lynn, Norwich and South Norfolk.
• Little Acorn Network – monthly meetings for small businesses and artists in North Norfolk www.little-acorn.net

• BNI (Business Networking International) www.bni-europe.com - formal membership-only networking group with networks across Norfolk

• Norfolk Chamber of Commerce – large selection of formal events across the county www.norfolkchamber.co.uk

• ABC Network http://www.abcnetwork.biz/ Weekly breakfast meetings in Norwich, Bury St Edmunds and Watton

• 4 Networking http://www.4networking.biz/events/kings-lynn/ Regular meetings in King’s Lynn and Norwich (breakfast)

• Cambridge Network – regular meetings in Cambridge http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk

• 25AM - Regular breakfast meetings in Norwich www.25am.co.uk

Creating a social media personality

I have been lucky enough in the last week to deliver two workshops on social media and to share the potential of online networking with some interested individuals. The great thing about training and teaching is that I always find myself learning something at the same time as sharing my knowledge with others. One of the key comments raised in one workshop was the importance of integrating all aspects of social media activity into a streamlined strategy with blogging at the core. As I work my way through the maze of social networking opportunities I can really start to see the potential benefits of a holistic approach, although I am not yet tempted to go as far as "cheating" by using automatic updates as i still feel the individuality of the posts is crucial. One of the key values of social media is the importance of personality, which must show through in both individuals and brands. This also extends to adding an element of emotion to posts which makes them far more interesting to the reader.

Kirstie Allsopp @KirstieMAllsopp (posh presenter of Location, Location, Location) is an astute example of a social media-savvy celeb. One of her tweets which stayed in my mind when asked for a twitter tip was simply FFF - follow fun folk. She mixes home life and work life in her posts to achieve a healthy balance of personality and emotion with the serious promotion of her new tv series. When recently appointed as a celeb ambassador for the Keep Britain Tidy campaign, organisers credited the fact she made a personal call to express her keen interest in the role as a key factor in their choice. Again the real personality is shining through.

The challenge for small businesses is to identify and develop this type of appealing, almost human personality for their brand and share it with the world.