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December 11, 2012December 11, 2012

‘The E-Factor: Entrepreneurship in the Social Media Age’ : Review and author interview

Do you have the E-Factor?

The E-Factor is the largest social network for entrepreneurs in the world.

Today, I’m going to tell you about E-Factor’s founders Adrie Reinders and Marion Freijsen’s new book The E-Factor: Entrepreneurship in the Social Media Age.

And I’m really pleased to have done a short email interview with Marion too – you can read it at the bottom of this post.

I guess we all knew that recent changes in technology, including the explosion of social media, have changed the world for entrepreneurs. But I’d not seen the full picture put together by experienced entrepreneurs until I read this book.

So what has changed?

Entrepreneurs have become younger. People now start businesses straight out of university (or even before) whereas you used to need a good few years of work experience before you could even consider it. There were always a few exceptions, but generally entrepreneurs were not starting up in their twenties. Today’s entrepreneurs are also more willing to take more risks at a younger age.
New technology means entrepreneurs can collaborate, seek funding, network and find clients and suppliers.
…but whatever you do, good or bad, can be spread around the internet in minutes. As the authors say “internet awareness can make or break you”
There are many more entrepreneurs, which means there is a community where entrepreneurs can exchange ideas and opportunities between each other.
…which also means you have to stay a few steps ahead of the copycats if you’re going to survive.
Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter have arrived.
…but there are more entrepreneurs competing for funding now.
You can have a virtual team working on your product around the world and around the clock
…but new demands and expectations have changed the speed at which entrepreneurs must operate.

That said, some things have not changed:

Traditional sources of funding like bank loans and grants are still available (but you need to spend longer making the right contacts to stand a chance of getting them).
There is still a strong need for real-world events and meeting face-to-face. Today’s entrepreneurs need to communicate effectively in both the real world and the virtual one.

The e-Factor explores all of these issues and gives useful advice on using the tools for entrepreneurship (Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Foursquare, Cloud Computing, YouTube, LinkedIn and many more) plus case studies on businesses that have both got it right and those who have got it wrong.

So if you would like to see how the social media world has changed the life of the entrepreneur – and in much wider terms than simply promoting a product or service – then I really recommend The E-Factor: Entrepreneurship in the Social Media Age.

I asked one of the authors Marion Freijsen, some questions about how the advice in The e-Factor could apply to Business Plus Baby’s readers:

1) Have you found that women approach entrepreneurship differently to men? If so, is there any advice you’d give to women entrepreneurs? Are there any mistakes that women in particular tend to make and and how can we avoid them?

Interesting question….first of all, our philosophy is that you are an Entrepreneur first – before gender, race, religion and other labels that may apply. In that sense, we don’t think the passion that drives entrepreneurs is different between men and women.

However, women in general are more cautious. They are under-confident about their own capabilities and will play down their skills. This is something I am always passionate to teach other women – be bold, be brazen, be OUT THERE because the guys are for sure. They are OVER confident, and will fail more often but simply pick themselves up, dust of their jackets and add it to their CV with pride as newly gained “expertise” 🙂 We women have to start copying that attitude but keep our own gut feel close by to guide us away from real dangers.

2) In the introduction, you mention mumpreneur Sari Crevin of Booginhead and how she built her business part-time. What tips or advice can you give to someone who wants to be an entrepreneur but in part-time hours?

Simple: just do it! If you don’t start, you will never know what it may grow into.

3) It’s fantastic to read that people in their twenties are now becoming entrepreneurs straight out of university. My own experience was that we were encouraged to get a corporate job after university. It was only when we realised years later that the corporate career ladder was never going to satisfy us that we thought about going into business.

Do you have any advice for those of us who are in out thirties and forties who are trying to ‘unlearn’ being taught to be employees?

I don’t think you need to “unlearn” those attitudes to be honest. I was an “intra-preneur” for many years myself. But when I look back, I used all those corporate years to learn valuable information that now helps me run my own business. I think there are two types of “would-be-entrepreneurs” in the corporate world. Those that dream of being their own boss – and those that dream and will go out and do it. It’s good to dream for anyone, but ultimately – if you find yourself making excuses every time you get the opportunity to turn it into a real something – you are probably never going to really get out there and do it. And that is fine too!

If you are leaning towards really wanting to run your business, look at where you are in the company you are in right now, look at the skills you have but particularly at the skills you lack – you should be completely honest with yourself about those latter ones even more then the former! And then set about making the connections and acquiring the skills you need – not to make it another hurdle (ie. I have to learn this first….) but more to road map yourself and see yourself achieving that goal.

Trust me, whatever you manage to take with you is golden, and then you find you still have a ton to learn when you do take that step!! And that’s where EFactor.com can help 🙂

Thank you very much, Marion!

Don’t miss a thing here at Business Plus Baby! Click here to get my newsletter. I’ll also send you a copy of my e-book Running a business around a family: 9 steps to success.

December 7, 2012

The dark side of social media

Do you buy Nature Valley crunchy bars? We love them here at Lindop Towers.

But there’s trouble in the valley at the moment. Copywriter Anne Maybus of Clever Streak mentioned it this week in a Facebook group we both belong to. It’s scary stuff for anyone who uses social media to promote their business, which is why I wanted to tell you about it.

Around a week ago, a blogger accused Nature Valley of using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in their products. She didn’t give any evidence for this at all, just mentioned it as fact. A comment was made on the Nature Valley Facebook page along the lines of “why do you use GMO products in your bars?” and since then a flood of negative comments have poured onto the Nature Valley Facebook page.Take a look here: www.facebook.com/naturevalley

I would like to give you links to the original blog post but I didn’t bookmark it and now there are so many comments on the Facebook page I can no longer get back to the original one.

Does Nature Valley use GMO ingredients? I have no idea, but a quick Google search suggests there’s not much hard evidence that they do.

Here’s what’s scary though: one accusation from a single blogger with zero evidence has caused complete chaos.

What’s more, Nature Valley have done absolutely nothing about it on their Facebook page.

I don’t think they are blissfully unaware of the chaos, because they’ve gone from posting almost daily to no posts at all since 1st December. Personally, I think they are doing nothing until they talk to their legal team. Understandable in the old pre-social media world, but these days a delay like this is causing untold damage to their brand.

What scares me most is how Facebook users have blindly believed this claim and not bothered to check the evidence. If it’s on the internet then it must be true, eh?

So what does this mean for those of us running far smaller businesses?

Keep a close eye on your social media profiles.
‘Going viral’ is usually considered to be good for marketing, but it can also have its dark side. More on this next week in my review of the book The E-Factor: Entrepreneurship in the Social Media Age.
You need to respond promptly to any comments on your social media profiles, especially negative ones.
People have very short attention spans when they are online and many won’t bother to check the facts before taking action.
Be careful when making claims about other companies on your blog. I wouldn’t want to be in the blogger’s shoes when the lawyers get on the case. Especially since Nature Valley is just a brand of General Mills, one of the largest food companies in the world.

I’ll be watching how this pans out with interest.

What are your thoughts on this? Please do leave me a comment.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

December 3, 2012December 6, 2012

Why you shouldn’t bombard your customers with discounts this Christmas

I don’t know about you, but this year I feel bombarded by Christmas discounts.

Sellers often think that they’ve built up enough goodwill by mailing regularly (but not too often) the rest of the year to allow them to bombard their users with discounts during on the run up to Christmas.

However, during December your customers could be receiving several emails a day that are exactly like the emails you’re sending. And if you keep sending them, there’s a good chance that your subscribers will lump your emails in with the rest of them and simply hit ‘delete’.

A customer isn’t just for Christmas

The long-term relationship you have with your customer has to come first. Instead of trying to maximise your gains from your holiday sales in the short term, aim to maximise your long-term customer value.

That isn’t to say you shouldn’t try to sell your products during the holidays. You should. But don’t do it at the expense of your relationship with your customers.

Email only two or three times maximum during the run up to Christmas. Send enough mailings that you let your customer base know about your offers, but don’t try to pressure them into buying.

Making your products stand out

If everyone is receiving multiple sales emails every day, the answer is not to mail them even more often to try and get sales. Instead, try to make your offer stand out.

Ask yourself why they signed up for your email list or purchased your products in the first place.

If you’re selling jeans, they might have signed up because they want to look great. If you run a website for work at home mums, they might have signed up because they want to make more money.

Identify what the core desire of your market is, then try to tailor your offers to that core desire. Instead of just discounting, try to come up with more creative offers that stand out.

Tailor offer around past purchases

Instead of just mailing all your customers with the same offer, try to segregate your list based on products they’ve purchased in the past. Then send offers based on what people have bought in the past. Whether this is possible for you or not will depend on how you have set up your mailing list. So if you can’t currently do this, it may be worth looking at the information you gather on your clients so you have the option to do it in future.

Ideally, this should give you a higher conversion rate as well as a lower unsubscribe rate.

So there you go, three ways of making the best of the run up to Christmas without annoying your customers.

Don’t miss a thing! Click here to get my newsletter. I’ll also send you a copy of my e-book Running a business around a family: 9 steps to success.

photo credit: Karen Roe

November 26, 2012November 26, 2012

Three good reasons why you should write an e-book now

Yes, you really should write an ebook as soon as you can. 🙂

In this audio I give my three top reasons for writing ebooks:

listen to ‘3 Good reasons why you should write an ebook’ on Audioboo

Here’s a summary of those reasons:

1. It’s a wonderful feeling when you wake up in the morning and find not only have you sold an ebook in your sleep, but there’s money in your Paypal account too! Of course, you need a plan to make sure you sell more than just the one! But the first few times it happens it’s incredibly exciting.

2. It’s a way to start selling your time one-to-one and start selling products one-to-many instead. Yes, I know it’s almost a cliche now, but it really is true. You only have 24 hours a day, but if you package up what you know as an e-book or e-course (information product) then you can sell an almost unlimited number of them. E-books are your first step.

3. E-courses and online communities (membership sites) are usually far more lucrative than e-books, but it really is best to start with an e-book. An e-book is a simple to produce as converting a Word file to a PDF and there are simple, inexpensive shopping carts you can use to take payments.

Having said that, actually writing your first e-book can be tricky because you need to find the time to do it and you have to deal with all the self-doubt that gets in your way. Then you have to add the extra blurb, get a good-looking cover and weigh up whether you should sell from your own sit or sell on other sites (e.g. Amazon’s Kindle). Best to get that first e-book out of the way now because the others will be far easier!

You can read how I turned an e-book into an e-course here: My first e-course – Earn What you Deserve as a Mumpreneur.

If you’d like me to help you write your first e-book and get it up for sale, join me on Thursday for my ‘Write Your First e-Book’ webinar. Click here for more.

Image courtesy of anankkml / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

November 23, 2012October 13, 2015

The easiest time ever to start a business. Seriously.

Seriously? After the credit crunch and double-dip recession? Yes.

Sage recently carried out a piece of research on entrepreneurship in the UK and found that…

… more parents (50%) are considering starting their own business in the next 2 years than those with no children (40%). One in five budding entrepreneurs wants set up their own business as they want a job that fits around their family life. However, on the flipside, half said they are concerned about starting their own business as their family life means they appreciate the stability being employed gives them.

To that I would say “So what’s stopping you?”. The old days when you had little choice but to give up your job, get a huge bank loan and then work full time on your start-up are now over.

Instead, you can start a business in your evening and weekends, test your concept and grow your entrepreneurial muscles all without risking more than a few hundred pounds. How? Start any business that doesn’t involve a commitment to bricks and mortar or much stock, so I’m talking eBay, pop-up shops, Etsy and stalls at events or markets as well as online stores.

In my experience, what holds people back is the way we have been trained to only accept payment in return for employment. There’s this weird mental barrier in finding something that people want to buy and exchanging it for money. Learn more about this exchange process (selling in its most basic, one-to-one form) and how to do it well and you’re well on your way to starting up on your own.

Yes, the fact that starting up is so easy means that there’s a lot of competition and many copycats out there. But many don’t have the stamina, creativity or determination to keep going. You do.

So are women’s attitudes different to men’s? Sage say..

Women (41%) are less likely than men (44%) to consider starting their own business in the next two years; with the greatest challenge for women (23%) being not knowing where to start. For men the biggest perceived challenge is access to funding (28%). Women also worry more about the stress of starting their own business (30%) but interestingly are less likely than men (19% to 24%) to feel they don’t have what it takes to succeed in the current economic climate.

It’s no surprise that women are less willing to risk debt, and I’m sure the fear of stress comes from already having a lot on our plates. But how much of this is a vague fear that comes from out-of-date assumptions about what it takes to start a business?

Of course, if you genuinely have problems with debt then it’s best to seek insolvency help or debt recovery advice or get in touch with the Citizens Advice Bureau.

As for the economic climate, yes people are more careful with their money at the moment. But there are signs that things are picking up and our communities are actively looking for new businesses to revive them. The Portas Pilot Towns (my home town Bedford is one) are a great example of this.

So don’t be held back by outdated beliefs about starting your own business. Keep it simple: find something, sell it and learn from the process. Then repeat it.

Want some company as you start your business? Click here to get my newsletter. I’ll also send you a copy of my e-book Running a business around a family: 9 steps to success.