The number crunching analysis had all been carried out by the organisers Brandwatch and Headstream. As judges we were asked to comment on whether:

1. For the main part, the brand provides value based content in its social spaces, rather than focusing on pushing traditional marketing ‘messages’

2. The brand provides a consistent presence on its social platforms, demonstrating an ‘always-on’ approach to community engagement

3. The brand prioritises the community over its own agenda, valuing and responding to the community’s contributions, needs and ideas

4. Overall, there is the sense that the brand has established a powerful community spirit across social spaces – a certain ‘Social Brand Factor’ that’s hard to define, but undeniably present.

Faced with the task of evaluating 100 different brands I quickly came up with a couple of surrogate measures of how the companies were engaging. One was to look at their twitter stream to see if there was any evidence of re tweeting anyone else’s comments. The other was to look at their Facebook page and see if anyone other than the brand was doing any posting.

I won’t comment on the individual final positions (except to say that Innocent deservedly won) but what I found fascinating was that, at least as far as I could see, small companies and the cause related sites interacted quite well with their customers whereas for the Corporate world it was broadcasting as usual.

Does this fit with anyone else’s perceptions?

The headline report is available here.

But you never seem to see much about the product itself.

Last time I went for a job (1996) I was applying for a post as development manager in a Quango (which I incidentally got) so I popped into Foyle’s to see if I could find a book on New Product Development – after all you have to be able to talk about it right – even if you’ve been doing it all your life

Anyway I found 3 books out of a whole wall of how to do business stuff and only one of those was semi useful. So there seems to me to be a bit of a gap here.

I know from my own research work that one of the largest gaps in the small business armoury is how to do meaningful research so I thought I might share a few pointers with you,
I’ve come to the view that the first thing you need for a business is something that people want to buy – in large enough numbers for you to make enough money to be there for the next iteration.

Why do I say Iteration? Because in today’s world people will copy you or the market moves on or a whole raft of new stuff comes along. And because as markets mature there’s less money around. If you need to earn enough money to support your team, you have to be working in a sweet spot where you can generate enough cash to stay in business. That means developing the business. You’ll really find it hard to stand still in today’s business environment.

It helps if your product is rare, not easily copied or imperfectly mobile. That means it can’t be made in China. Fresh Spinach and Salad leaves are a great example.

However you will find (or at least this has been true in any business I’ve been involved in) that the market doesn’t want what you want to sell to it. This means that if you spend months doing detailed, costed plans of how exactly it’s all going to work you’re wasting your time.

This doesn’t mean to say you should do no planning. You should have done enough sums to make sure that you can produce what you think you want to sell profitably and you should have done a competition analysis to know that there is a gap in the market you can fill. Whether there is a market in the gap or not is what we are going to find out next.

But you should still have talked to potential customers, established what they might want to buy, and be prepared to deliver it reliably without going bust in the process.

This is where the fun starts. Because the truth is that what the market wants to buy is probably SOME of what had in mind mixed up with a lot of other stuff that you haven’t thought of yet and which you will discover through the tango with the market that you are about to embark on.

What you need is a way of presenting possibilities quickly to potential customers and be able to adapt quickly to the feedback you get. This can be face to face – or online.

My introduction to selling and market research came last time we were getting it together in the country back in the 1970s. While looking for a job I bought a knitting machine and started making jumpers, dresses and waistcoats. Market research then consisted of bopping into a suitably funky shop with my suitcase and saying approximately “hey missus what do you think of these?” Some were ok as they were – some designs needed developing based on what the customers said and were closed with the immortal line ” will you take 6 if I make them like that”

After a few rounds of that we had a product line which morphed from me doing it to out-knitters doing it to mail ordering the patterns. It never made much money but I’ve used the principles since in products that have ranged from Dock Tractors to Software to Business Support Services to Spinach Pate and Marmalade.

Of course I’ve purposefully made it full of casualness and fun for this article – really you need to be a bit more strategic than this so I’ll tell you a bit more about research and new product development in the next instalment.

In the mean time here’s an extract from my new Business Basics Video series which covers the New Product Development area

I would be grateful to anyone who completes this first investigation.

You can take the questionnaire here.

Click here to take survey

I’ll be promoting a proper questionnaire in due course but what – if anything – would you find helpful in things like mobile apps, cloud computing or imaginative use of digital media in the meantime?

How would you like to access University resources – and what results do you think you could gain?

Alan

Know yourself, know your enemy and know the terrain in which you are going to engage them and you’re more likely to win than if you don’t. I know there’s a whole lot more about burning your boats and smashing your cooking pots before attacking (not to mention beheading a couple of the Emperors favourite concubines pour encourager les autres) but for the purposes of this blog that’s enough.

So this one is about the terrain – the way that market’s consolidate and you need to decide whether you’re part of the Gorilla’s Gang or whether you’re going to play nicely with the other Monkeys.

It also covers the kind of issues you’re going to hit along the way – moving premises, recruiting staff (particularly the sales staff) knowing when you’re going to have to stump up for my IT and a totally unexpected wrinkle that kicks in once the company has more than 10 people in it.

So that’s what this little video is about – its about 15 minutes this one – likely to be the longest one – but it’s interesting stuff.

Well I think so anyway

www.alanrae.co.uk

I’ve now run four of these and spent a lot of the last 10 years carrying out research projects into different areas covering IT and systems, Marketing and Peoople issues.

So I thought I’d try it out on you chaps Any feedback will improve the final product.

Just so you know what’s coming up they’re about 10 minutes worth of voice over powerpoint.

They take a balanced scorecard approach and the 7 topics covered are

1) Business Basics
2) Markets and How companies Grow
3) Innovation and Products
4) Sales and Marketing
5) People
6) Building Value
7) Business Model and Finance

Let me know what you agree / disagree with

Thanks

I’d advise you to look at it in detail as it’s got a lot of meat in it about when to go forward and when to hold back at different stages of the business.

by visually via

YouTube has recently revamped their channel facilities which not only make it easier for users to find the content that’s been created but also allows us to embed complete playlists into a web page.

I’ve recently been creating a Business Basics video series which uses the findings from the additional evidence base section of the growing jobs project as the bulk of the section on Managing Teams.

I’ve taken the opportunity to create a new play list which is embedded here. It combines this 16 minute video with the 4 video clips from the project from VHB-Humber, Bardsleys, Lowater and Hillier.

I hope you find it useful

I find that many insights these days come through conversations on-line and in pubs. There’s something aout conversations that crystallise your thinking. I do quite a lot of this on the Ecademy Blog page  and in fact the impetus to restate this came from a conversation in there with the redoubtable Steve Holmes.

The 7 Point Plan for How to do Business

Fundamentally we are all working towards creating   a sustainable business that will grow.  By sustainable I mean “Lots of Apples at a reasonable profit for a long time” – in the concise words of Emily Durrant.

So here is what I think is really important if you want to succeed.

1 Treat people who buy from you, sell to you and work for you as grown ups – it’s amazing the difference this makes.

2 Identify something that people want to buy – then sell it to them – politely. If in doubt ask them what they want.

3 Describe what you have to sell in words of one syllable focusing on why it’s useful to whoever’s going to buy it. If you are selling spinach then this step is not necessary.

4 Take the trouble to create easy to operate procedures that have some resilience in them. That means doing the numbers and having some way of tracking the growth of value in your business.

5 Think permaculture and build sustainability into your business model. It’s no longer a nice-to-have but a core part of a 21st century business strategy. For instance we’ve put in a rainwater harvesting reservoir this year. It will save us £8k a year.

6 When you screw up admit it and refund without question – this will save time, money and your blood pressure.

7 Take whatever profits you make and spend them on something that is valuable, useful or beautiful. Don’t what ever you do entrust it to a suit to invest on your behalf.

That’s about it really

If you want to build some of these into your own business I  can help you. Next event is a Free webinar on 1st November on using Social Media for Real Businesses – you can book on here. or you can read an extended version of this in my e-book 21 Business Stories .