Having your own business is tough, especially if you don’t know how to create a strategy that can show successful results. With Gloople, I used the 5 C’s to make sure I was marketing my business correctly online. Here are the 5 C’s and why they are so important to your business.

Coverage

By coverage I mean using all of the tools available to make sure you have a presence across all of the relevant Social Networks. Just having a Facebook page is no longer enough – you need to cover all routes. You never know where a potential customer may come from so make sure you have at least leveraged your business on the main 5 networks; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+.

Collection

The idea of Collection is simple; keep collecting your followers. By doing this you are not only online building a community, you are increasing your brand awareness and positioning your business as a company sector leader. Use the other 4 C’s to help you with this step. Collection is important because without the increase in followers on Social Media, your network will never grow which means no new brand advocates, customers, or sales.

Curation

To make sure you get the coverage you need to collect your followers, you need to allow your followers to curate your information. You may find your followers alter the information they are sharing to match their audience. Don’t let this bother you as they are still sharing YOUR content but matching it with what their audience wants to hear. Without curation, your information won’t be shared as much as you would like.

Context

The type of context you use to promote your business is very important as you don’t want to force your products on to your followers – hard selling does not work on social media. Money Supermarket created a Batman infographic around the time of the film released based on how much it costs to be Batman. They created something related to their brand (how much something costs) without selling their product and offering something fun for their community. This was shared over 25,000 times in just Facebook alone. This proves that sharing content that is interesting get picked up and curated.

Confidence

Finally, be confident about your business. If you don’t believe you can be successful, no one else will. Success on social media will not happen overnight, it will take time and you need to build trust and confidence within your community. I have over 13,000 followers on Twitter but I started at 0, just like everyone else.

I hope you will be able to use the 5 C’s to help you market your business online!

“We’re extremely happy with our progress so far, and one of our main goals is to transform the overall Google experience and make all of the services people already love faster, more relevant, and more reliable” - Google

It’s safe to say that Google owns the internet. Google accounts for 90% of online traffic and the second largest search engine is YouTube which, we all know, is owned by Google! With many layers to its empire including Google Docs, Google Alerts, gMail, Picasa and Google Shopping to name a select few, Google was always missing that one key element, a social layer.

With bad reviews, an archaic platform and many complaining users, Google’s social layer; Google+ didn’t have the best of starts. What was supposed to be the next best thing since Facebook (in Google’s eyes) clearly wasn’t performing and something had to change.

Do you remember Google Buzz or Google Wave? Probably not. Google+ was Google’s third time lucky when attempting to harness the power of Social. As it stands, Google+ is an extremely important platform for those who want to market their business online and here are a few reasons why;

• SEO Benefits – With Google owning 90% of online traffic, you should reap the benefits Google+ can offer your business when it comes to search engine optimisation. Make sure your Google+ Business Page includes all of your keywords and is constantly updated with fresh and relevant content.

• Google Hangouts – Google offers something unique in their social layer where you can actually hold a face to face meeting with a group of people, inside Google+ completely free of charge.

• Google Circles – The ability to categorise those you are connected with via Circles is a great way to share the right information with the right people. Google Circles is a great way to target your sharing.

Google+ is more active than you are probably aware of. With over 260M active users, 60% of which log in everyday, Google+ is one of the fastest growing social networks ever boasting over 500M Google+ “enabled” users. Google+ also acts as an influencer, especially when it comes to shares of +1’s. Google sees this as a social recommendation and will rank you in search according to this.

Google+ is the same as Facebook and Twitter in the sense that it acts in real time but with an extra edge. Any status update on Google+ is immediately indexed and pushed into Google Search. When posting in Google+, make sure you use keywords and use “” to make sure they are being picked up by Google as being key search terms for your business.

Google+ isn’t going anywhere and I have a feeling it will become an influential networks inside of the social media space. From being able to create a community and using keyword rich content, linking straight back to your site, Google+ is not only a social advantage to a business selling online, its a Search advantage too.

Once you have an established business, you need to start thinking about entering industry awards. Awards aren’t just about receive kudos for something remarkable your business has achieved. Here are my 7 reasons why a small business should enter awards.

1. Learning Process

Entering awards for your business isn’t just about winning. You get to learn more about yourself and your business. The awards process itself can be quite grueling and difficult. Once you have all the right information, it will make it easier further down the line. You will need to create a spreadsheet with all of the awards you are eligible to enter so that you don’t miss any of the deadline dates.

2. Helps Re-evaluate your business

Every time you enter a new award, there may be something new worth mentioning. Entering these awards helps you re-evaluate your business so that you are always on top of what is going on. It is worth mentioning that when your business hits a milestone, you need to document it so that it is ready to be included in your awards entry.

3. You need to be in it, to win it

If you don’t enter, you won’t win. This may mean putting aside a budget for some of the more important awards so that you are ready to enter as soon as entries open. Just because your business may not be as established as one of your competitors it doesn’t mean you won’t come away with something. You may not win, but you may be highly commended. Don’t let the fear of your competition putt you off entering any industry awards.

4. Make important business connections

If the awards you are entering have ceremonies, make sure you or one of your colleagues attends them. This is very important as you could meet very influential people that you will be able to connect with on a business level. Don’t forget to take business cards with you as you never know when you may need them! When Gloople was chosen as one of Smarta’s top 100 businesses, I attended the awards ceremony where I made a lot of important connections and had a conversation with James Caan.

5. Brand Exposure

Entering Awards and having your business shortlisted is one of the best ways to gain the right kind of brand exposure. It may not happen straight away but the more awards you enter, the more your businesses name will appear in front of people and this can only be good exposure for your brand.

6. Build Relationships with Employees

Entering awards and winning will help build relationships in house. It is always nice to be acknowledged for the work you put into a business and your employees will feel the same way. It may also be a nice gesture to have your team at an awards ceremony to enjoy the company of each other in a social environment.

7. Get to know your Business Sector and Competition

The more awards you enter, the more likely you are to see your competitors. There will always be that one company that you roll your eyes at because they keep winning the awards you enter. Don’t let this defeat you, you never know what will happen – people might start rolling their eyes at your business next!

Are you ready, as a Small Business to build your band and enter industry awards?

In an ideal world for most people, the way we buy and sell as a business or consumer, would never change. I, however am not most people and believe that change is a great opportunity to learn more about the technology world and improve the way our businesses function. Two words that have been floating around the web for some time now have a purpose and meaning. Social Commerce is here, and it won’t be disappearing anytime soon.

Mark Zuckerberg was right when he said “If I had to guess, Social Commerce is next to blow up” back in 2011. Social Commerce is the combination of social media and digital technology to sell both products and services online.

Social Commerce will be a driving force for online sales because of the art of storytelling. What better way to connect with an online customer than giving them a reason to connect with YOUR business? Every business has a story and a personality trait which is social media worthy.  If you can connect with your customers on a personal level through story telling on social media, you will build your clientele which in essence will translate into a social commerce transaction.

There are 1 billion people on Facebook with around 75% of those users “liking” a brand’s Facebook page. The Facebook users that like a fan page are ultimately saying they will buy from that business IF that company engages with them in the right way. Did you know that a Facebook share (when someone see’s a post on your Facebook fan page, “shares” it with their community who then follows the link back to your page, visits your website and purchases from you) is worth £2.60? Even more surprisingly, Twitter can generate a massive £21.04 in sales through a share. Think Social Media is a waste of time? Think again.

When I hold a keynote seminar, I always ask the same question. When you are inside Facebook and see one of their advertisements down the side of the page, do YOU firstly click on it, and THEN purchase that product? 99% of the time, no more than three hands are raised out of around 50-60 people. Why? Because we no longer trust advertising more than we do peer to peer recommendations. Andrew Mason, Groupon founder said the following; “Middle-class people sit around, trying to think of how to spend money.  One of the most powerful ways to figure that out is looking at what your friends are buying – these are the people you trust”. This, I definitely agree with.

It has been estimated that by 2015, Social Commerce sales will reach around $30 billion a year with 50% of online revenue coming from social media. We are seeing well known brands like Mercedes selling 666 cars in the space of 8 hours with their “Three Point Twitter” campaign and Adidas selling around £2,500 worth of products via in-stream Facebook and Twitter. Brands are making magic and it’s not just a myth anymore, there is a lot of money to be made if you utilise the tools available to combine social media and digital commerce.

The best way to sell on social media is to in fact, not sell at all. For your followers to really trust your business, you need to take a step back and realise why you are even a part of a social network. The intent is not always a purchase, it is to share great content and to engage with a community. Once you have built this foundation, you won’t need to force your products or services onto those who are connected to you, they will naturally, become brand advocates.

Social Commerce is here to stay and it’s time for you to look at the future of connecting with your online consumer.

As someone who is constantly short on time, I am always trying to find ways to make sure I am doing everything I can to save time wherever possible. In my last blog I spoke about using LinkedIn to avoid wasting time when speaking to a companies Gatekeeper and I want to try and help those who basically live in their Gmail inbox like I do.

As most of you know, Gmail can be difficult at times, especially when you are receiving numerous unimportant emails which are going straight into your inbox. As this is something that used to happen to me on a daily basis I had to find a solution. The best way to avoid having your phone buzzing every two minutes with pointless emails is to filter them. To do this, click on the email, go to the “more” button and select “filter messages like these”. A white box will then appear and you will need to select “create filter with this search”. You will then come to various options regarding how you want to filter the corresponding email address. For me, the best way to organise this is to select “skip the inbox (archive it)” and apply it to a label. Once you have made your decision you can click “create filter”. This will now automatically add the emails you receive from that filtered email address to a different place in your inbox. The advantages of doing this are;

• To clean up your inbox by removing all the unimportant emails and filtering them into the correct folders

• To allow YOU to focus on the important emails as opposed to being distracted.

• To avoid the constant vibration of your mobile phone.

Did you know that having an inbox full of emails forces you to multi task which lowers your IQ? I didn’t realise how much of a difference it made to my organisation until I changed the way my Gmail works.

Another great way to make your Gmail more efficient is to integrate an application called PowerBot which allows you to work more productively with Evernote. Powerbot allows you to link the notes and reminders from inside Evernote and transfer them to an email or even your googe calendar. If you go to the Powerbot application site here and click on “install the browser extension” you will see a pop up window where you can select to “add to chrome”. Once you have followed the steps on this page, you will then have to follow the three simple steps to connect your Evernote account with your Gmail account. Keep an eye out for Step 3 – this will show you exactly how PowerBot works.

This free of charge software allows you to file a message from Evernote in your Gmail folder and even insert an Evernote message into an email and send an email to Evernote.

Without using these handy tips, I would find myself having to constantly clean my inbox and using other tools that are not compatible with each other, wasting more of my valuable time.

I hope you find these tips helpful and trust me, there is a lot more you can do inside of Gmail to keep you focused on running a successful business.

Running a B2B business can be challenging at times, especially when you are trying to contact the right person in a company regarding potential partnerships or joint venture. We all go through the same problem when we call a company, asking to speak to the relevant person and being caught up by a gatekeeper.

A gatekeeper is someone who directs calls to the right person within a business. The problem with this is that this person does not understand how important it is for you to share your business with them. On most occasions, you will end up either taking an email address that is already on the site like info@, enquiries@ or giving your details in the hope that there is a chance they will call you back (which we all know, is very slim indeed).

It has taken me a long time to overcome this problem and find a solution to solve this ongoing issue which I did in 2008.. I am happy to say that I have and want to share it all with you, and now is part of my Customer Acquisition Journey. Thanks to social media, we can now find the right person to talk to and for B2B companies, it all comes down to LinkedIn.

When I was exhibiting at a trade show last year with my eCommerce Platform Gloople, we were approached by a well known global company in the hopes of striking up a partnership which I was very interested in doing. After weeks of chasing this contact, they were not moving forward with what had been initially discussed at the trade show. I then decided to go over this person’s head and use LinkedIn search to find the right person to speak to. After various back and forward emails, I then had a face to face meeting with this company which went very well indeed.

Back in 2008 I remember a similar situation where I was caught up by a gatekeeper and was going around in circles. I then went to LinkedIn, found the right person to contact and had a successful meeting with that person 72 hours later.

I have spent a long time growing my LinkedIn account to over 2,500 connections, allowing me to find the right people to connect with. If I am trying to contact someone who is not a connection of mine, I use the search functionality to find the right person in that said company. On various occasions, I find that the person I am trying to contact is a secondary connection meaning we have a person in common. I will then email them and ask for a warm introduction so that I am not coming from an unknown place.

If you don’t know how to get started with LinkedIn, here are my 5 top tips for using Linkedin 5 minutes a day;

1.Treat LinkedIn differently to Facebook and Twitter – LinkedIn is a B2B network and because of this, it should not be treated the same as other social networks. Only add those you have done business with or want to in the future.

2. Make sure your Profile is 100% Complete – If it isn’t LinkedIn will know and keep pestering you because they want you to experience all that LinkedIn has to offer.

3. Participate in Groups – There are so many great groups on LinkedIn with industry experts that you will be able to learn something off and vice versa. Utilise this part of LinkedIn and make some strong business connections.

4. Use LinkedIn as a News Outlet – LinkedIn now has a News tab once you have logged in. The news in this section is created based on your interests, which you can customise. Use the information in this section to share with your community who also share your interests.

5. Endorsing your Contacts – This is a relatively new feature LinkedIn have brought into play and has already proved its effectiveness. Make sure you endorse your contacts for the work they deserve recognition for and you will receive the same in return.

I hope you will start to use LinkedIn to help you grow your business and make those all important connections.

Small business owners; listen up! This year, the U.K. will be getting Small Business Saturday this year! In the United States alone, their version of this highly popular event say over $5 billion in sales for small businesses.

The Shadow Business Secretary Chukka Umunna spoke to The Independent regarding Small Business Saturday;

“The UK version will be launched against the backdrop of a traumatic time for many retailers in town centers  where an average of one in seven shops is empty after a series of failures over the past five years.” Mr Umunna said: “I want to make Small Business Saturday a reality in Britain to actively champion, celebrate and showcase small, independent businesses on one of the busiest shopping days of the year.”

My Umunna has been a huge supporter of this event that will take place on the 7th December 2013. Small business retailers in the U.K., like many in the U.S. have struggled during the tough economic time. This is the time to really celebrate the achievement many small businesses have managed despite all odds.

This event in the U.K. is being backed by several influential groups including the Chambers of Commerce, Federation of Small Businesses, British Independent Retailers Association, The Association of Convenience Stores, the National Federation of Retail Newsagents and the Northern Ireland Independent Retail Trade Association, to name a few.

We should expect to see other well known small business advocates celebrating the event. Startup Britain and Startup Loans are two leading organisations who will be marketing this great event to their audience.

The U.S. version of Small Business Saturday is held on the Saturday after Black Friday. The idea was first formed in 2010 by American Express who picked up on the growing trend that Small Businesses were succeeding in such harsh times. They then decided to promote it around the holiday season and now has hundreds of supporters including cities, states, chambers of commerce, small business advocacy groups, high profile public officials and large brands like American Express, FedEx and The Small Business Administration (SBA)..

The U.S. have managed to successfully tap into Social Media to promote the event. Not only has Small Business Saturday become a major movement, social media activity is constantly active throughout the year. With it’s own website (www.shopsmall.com), Twitter handle and Hashtag (@Shopmall / #Shopsmall) Small Business Saturday has proved its ability to impact Twitter but even more so on Facebook with over 3 million likes on it’s Facebook Page.

I am a huge advocate of Small Businesses as I am an owner of one myself so I will definitely be supporting this cause, even if it is on both my Sister’s birthdays! Voted as one of the UK’s top 100 Startup’s by Startups.co.uk, keep an eye out for Gloople’s name around the 7th December!

What will you be doing to support Small Business Saturday?

It’s no secret that social media can break a brand’s reputation in one single tweet or facebook post. How can YOU make sure you either avoid this or take control of the situation straight away? You need to use a tool which allows you to monitor your businesses mentions on Social Media.

Most people would suggest using Google Alerts for this but there is one huge problem with this. The alerts are not in real time. By this I mean I receive google alerts on my mentions a week later than when I was mentioned. This means it takes me one whole week to react to a mention which isn’t good enough. A tool I have been using for a long time which allows me to see how I, or my business Gloople has been mentioned in real-time is Mention.

Mention was recently nominated as “Startup of the Year” at the TNW French Startup Awards proving it’s worth in the social tool market. This application can be accessed via the web, desktop and even iPhone. You can create alerts for key terms based on your business so you can monitor your industry, brand mentions and competitors.

After setting up my alerts, I found it much easier to track and mute all of the social noise on the world wide web.

As I am a contributor for various sites, I find Mention great to see what has been published and in real time. Without the use of Mention, I would never have found an article written about me by ZoneTwo from when I was at Pure London earlier this year. I also found an article written by the Telegraph on Gloople and the SEIS.

One of the reasons why I stand by Mention is the fact that I can use their platform on my mobile. A lot of companies have managed to make the transition from desktop to mobile but not quite made it as user friendly as most consumers would hope but this isn’t the case for Mention. As you can see in the image below, their iPhone and Android app is very easy to use and still works in real time.

Are you using Mention?

As a startup or small business the payment provider you chose for your eCommerce site is of high importance. You should be thinking about the user and the smoothest payment journey possible.

At Gloople, we saw the importance of the perfect payment provider from the beginning. We have met with over 18 different PSP, ISO and Acquirers from the new kids on the block; Stripe, Paymill, Braintree all the way to HSBC, Securetrading, Ogone, Skrill, Paypal, Realex, Google Checkout, Amazon Payments and many, many more.

Generally, as a small business, payments fall into the below categories;

• Credit and debit cards

• Electronic payments

• Direct transfer

Before you can choose the right payment provider for your business, you need to think about the kind of goods and services your business is selling. Credit and Debit card payments are the most popular type of payment method as the online world has developed over the years.

If your business trades online and has a physical store, you should offer credit and debit card payments. If your store is online only, you should be using payment systems like PayPal to make sure the checkout process is efficient. If your business sells to other businesses, you should look at credit transfer via the BACS system.

If you are spending your time searching for the perfect payment gateway, you should ask yourself;

• Have I read the small print? – make sure you’re not getting yourself into a long term contract with extra payments that will crop up. A lot of businesses will try and hide the information which you may disagree with in their small print.

• What’s the support like? – With the eCommerce world in constant action, you need support to be there when you really need it.

• Is my online payment gateway and shopping basket compatible? – You will need to check this to make sure your shopping cart can be integrated.

• Are there going to be hidden costs? – This can sometimes be overlooked so you need to be aware of any potential hidden costs such as multi-currency payments ect.

• Does my payment gateway come with anti-fraud? As you develop your site, you need to pick a payment provider that can provide the basic anti-fraud tools.

• Can I see the sales figures? – you should be looking to analyse your sales data all the time so chose a payment provider that will help manage your sales data.

The process of finding the right payment system has taken over three months of preparation with meeting after meeting followed by proposals. I am now in the process of sitting down with the Gloople team where we will, collectively chose the right partner for OUR customers. As a platform it is important that we give our merchants (brands and retailers) the simplest and quickest solution to help them start selling the day they sign up.

I hope when that when the time comes, you will have the right information to pick the payment provider suitable for your eCommerce site. In next weeks blog I will be going into more detail around the positives and negatives, to the various payment providers I have mentioned and their monthly fees, percentage and fixed fees per transaction.

This is a bittersweet topic for me as when I first heard Google’s plans for one of it’s many products, I was devastated. For many years, I found myself turning to Google Reader as a place for the best online daily news.

After finding out the news that Google Reader was closing down and seeing it trend on Twitter worldwide and in the UK, I knew it was time to let go and do my research. I used the LEAD strategy to find the next best thing.

Listen
For the listen part of the process, I used the tools available online to find something which people were using as their replacement for Google Reader.

Experiment
After reading what other people were using, I decided to experiment with some of the online tools that offer the same experience as Google Reader. This enabled me to understand the market and what online users really wanted to get out of an online daily news site.

Apply
This is where I took the websites I used as part of the experiment stage and put them into action. I posted news from three different sites to see which picked up the most traction (click through’s from followers on my social networks).

Develop
After finding the site that worked best, I included it as part of my online strategy. I would visit the site on a daily basis and pick some of the best articles, save them and share them with my audience.

After going through this process I found what The Next Web believed was the ultimate bookmarking tool and I have to agree with them. Welcome the new kid on the block; Dragdis.

Not only is the Dragdis site innovative and interactive, it has found its need in the market and perfected it’s online strategy. The team behind Dragdis love discovering things online, without 90% of all things interesting ending up in the black hole of bookmarked folders. The CEO Domas Sabockis spoke to The Next Web about why their product is more remarkable than those they compete with;

“Pocket is great, one click. But it does not help you organize. You then have to go back and organize. With Dragdis you are organizing and bookmarking at the same time. You put it in a particular folder. You can take your computer and throw it through the window and all the data will remain on dragdis.com”.

Dragdis solves bookmarking problems by allowing you to drag and drop links, images and videos and even text so that it appears on the right side of your browser the moment you start dragging it. Dragdis saves all meta-data once you drag items into a folder you created through Dragdis.

This business has taken something universal and made it remarkable. This is a perfect example of how people and technology is making our world a place where we are more efficient, giving us the time to focus on the art of real business and success.

Are you going to use Dragdis?