Man made recession

At risk of sounding like a man-hating, bra burning activist I was struck by a comment I read online recently: This recession is man made. Despite the best efforts of the equal opportunities policy-makers, its fair to say that men still hold a strong majority of the positions in senior management. Likewise in politics women are still under-represented, a point noted by David Cameron recently as he drives to recruit more female candidates for his party.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that it would have been a completely different story if women ruled the world, but simply that its worth considering the difference that a few more women in the banking boardrooms for example could have made. Stereotypically women are more cautious and risk-averse, characteristics that might have reduced the widely publicised problems of reckless lending. We all know that women like to talk things through (often at great length while long-suffering men politely pretend to listen), but maybe these soft skills could have been put to good use in discussing small issues before we reached such a global crisis.

The truth is that men and women are different, with stereotypical skill sets that make each of us well-suited to certain tasks and roles. I hope that we will continue to see the development of diversity in the workplace and that this balance in business will help to reduce the impact of the next recession.

EDP Future 50 - Women in Business

Last week the bible of Norfolk life, the Eastern Daily Press (EDP) published their Future 50 list of East Anglian entrepreneurs to watch over the next 12 months. Disappointingly only 2 women featured in the ones to watch and I felt compelled to write the letter below which was published in the EDP on Saturday 19th September:

Congratulations to the EDP business team on your excellent Future 50 project. Its fantastic to see the local media supporting local businesspeople in this way and sending out a positive message to readers in spite of the surrounding economic doom and gloom. I was however disappointed to see that only 2 enterprising women (Claire Martinsen and Kate Gaskin) made it into the list. This mirrors the pattern of last year’s Power 100 list in which I recall we were similarly sparsely represented. I’m sure that a balanced, high quality publication such as the EDP is not specifically discriminating but moreover that there are simply not enough women in business in Norfolk who are shouting about their success.

We have recently completed some research into female enterprise skills in association with the UEA and this identified that women still lack confidence in asserting and fulfilling their enterprising ambitions. As a result, a programme of training and support will be rolled out for women as part of Global Enterprise Week in November. Lets hope that after this many more women will be confident in their enterprising abilities and apply for the Future 50 in 2010.

Yours faithfully
Kate Elliott

The letter seems to have got everyone talking and I now have the ear of the EDP Business Editor which I hope to bend with my further thoughts! Watch this space...

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.

Social media madness

I've been neglecting my blogging recently in favour of exploring some of the other (many and varied) social media channels out there. The reason for this exploration is rooted in the social media workshop I am delivering next week for a Norfolk County Council programme to support tourism businesses (called Trading Up), but I've actually found myself secretly quite enjoying the journey. Social media (like all technology) is moving so fast and in many scenarios its still more a case of trial and error than following a set of tried and tested rules. This rings true with many aspects of marketing for small businesses too - I have lost count of the times I have been asked for a simple answer to the age old question: "What type of marketing will work for my business?" There is no one word answer I'm afraid.

I'm slowly being converted to the joys of Twitter despite a very sceptical start, and have already made 3 new Twitter friends of which i am justly proud! While its great to have all this amazing technology which makes life so global, its always good to be able to bring it back to a local level too, so i have concentrated my Twitter activity on tracking down other local Twitterers to engage with.

Linked In is also growing on me, and I now have kind recommendations from 6 associates. Time will tell if people actually read them!

Best of Norwich businesses

Yesterday evening Active Marketing & Design Ltd exhibited at the Best of Norwich business event at Caistor Hall. The Best of Norwich (http://www.thebestof.co.uk/norwich) is a website which recommends local businesses, and it is owned and run by husband and wife team Chris and Sara Greenfield from Wymondham. The difference between this site and the hordes of other online directories is that the member businesses like ours are all genuinely recommended Norwich businesses which Chris and Sara have hand-picked. We hugely value the importance of customer recommendation and referrals to build our business and The Best Of Norwich website helps to facilitate this by allowing users to log in and record their comments and testimonials about the businesses which they use.

At Caistor Hall, we were privileged to pick up a framed recommendation from one of our clients who had kindly written some nice things about our work on the Best Of Norwich site. In a small business community such as Norwich, the importance of reputation and recommendation can never be under-estimated. If a customer likes what you do, they may tell one friend or colleague - upset them and they are likely to tell more like 10 people about how awful you are.

The importance of buying local

I was privileged to be able to exhibit at the annual Buy Local celebration event held in the magnificent surroundings of Norwich's Dragon Hall last night. Membership of Buy Local is something that we are really passionate about, not just because its "in vogue", but because it makes good business sense. Buy Local is a social enterprise for independent local businesses which recognises that small business owners have a vital role to play in supporting the local economy, both as buyers and sellers. In order to qualify for membership, Active Marketing & Design has to buy from local suppliers where possible, something which we do already and are keen to do more of.
In turn Buy Local is a good place for us to promote our independent local business to other like-minded business people. The list of good reasons to Buy Local is endless, but stuff like keeping the pounds in the local economy, saving money, time and hassle, building a reputation and reducing our impact on the environment are all pretty critical.
The event had double meaning as it was held in the historic Dragon Hall which has been an integral part of local industry for centuries. In medieval times it was an important trading hall for merchants of key goods such as cloth and food products as it occupies a prominent position between the River Wensum and King Street, an important trading route. Im sure we could learn many lessons from those times before the internet and the global economy, about the importance of doing business with other local businesses.
http://www.buylocalnorfolk.org.uk
http://www.dragonhall.org

Access to finance for rural start ups

Research recently published by the Commission for Rural Communities has identified a worrying problem with the lack of access to financial advice in rural areas, a particularly pertinent issue in the current economic climate. Its not the first time that this theme has reared its head, and yet there is still limited recognition of the real issues or specific services to meet the needs of rural people and their businesses.

A lack of access to finance was one of the key findings of ground-breaking entrepreneurship researcher Izzy Warren-Smith back in the mid-nineties. Her work identified that in many cases women were the driving force behind the surge in farm diversification projects for struggling rural agricultural businesses. Yet these enterprising women were coming up against significant barriers in their quest to build a sustainable business, and lack of access to finance was a big issue. Farmer's wives/daughters/sisters would go to the bank with a decent business plan, but they were more often rejected. On the back of her pioneering work, Women in Rural Enterprise (WiRE) was established to offer support to these women, and is now a thriving national organisation which helps women to grow and develop their rural businesses.

I recently attended the WiRE annual conference at Harper Adams Agricultural College, which was buzzing with enthusiastic women in rural business. One of the key messages which came across was the tendency for women to stereotypically be more conservative with money (when running a business, not when shopping for shoes!) which puts us in a more recession-proof position and perhaps less in need of financial advice than men in rural areas.