Internet Power Systems

Are Investment Costs of Business Internet Marketing higher than you might think?

2010-02-16T09:47:30+00:00

Having just started to use Internet Marketing in our own business and trying to bring together all the different components to deliver a set of desired outcomes we have discovered it is not a simple task. We have created a huge amount of online content from Websites, Blogsites, Micro-Blogging and Social Media network participation. But and it is a big but, how do you convert all this activity (or lack of it) into a coherent message that brings visitors to your target online content and transcends to registrations and / or sales?

To be honest we have been merrily creating web content, accounts on twitter, facebook pages, blogs and regularly posting but without paying specific attention to the direction or the message. This has been a conscious choice on our part as we were not ready to join everything up yet, so we just started by increasing our online profile until we were set to go. I think this is one of the big hurdles for most people entering Internet Marketing at any level is... why am I doing this? Why am I posting content onto Blogs, twittering, when no one is visiting anyway? I'm not reading my other 1000 followers tweets, so I am sure they are not reading mine! If I'm the only one ready what I'm writing I'd sooner not bother! 2 Blog posts a day, why? for what? What am I going to say? What difference will it make?

We expect those new to Internet Marketing to blindly accept that 'you should get a blog, you should use Twitter and join Facebook... trust me... you will see the benefit, later on everything will be much clearer...'

Here then is the issue... of course signing up to these services, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linked in or any other social media platform is not in itself going to make any difference to a business. Just the same as printing some leaflets for a mailshot and leaving them in the garage, or attending networking meetings and not talking to anyone, these won't make much impact either.

The facts are that Internet Marketing is a complex business. It performs the functions of building individual's profiles and credibility, Brand awareness and product / service sales via one medium. Each of these areas requires different techniques, services and strategies online, but you can't go about this in a half baked, apathetic manner. Internet Marketing has the ability to transform businesses, enable small companies to compete with the 'big boys' and build new enterprises from nothing but not by making one blog post a week, the odd twitter tweet now and then and complaining that sales haven't increased yet!

So what is the reality? The reality is this, that Internet marketing provides the ability to reach 100,000's of people and quickly, but it won't happen without effort... A LOT OF IT!

Most Small Business's are owned privately, very often by the entrepreneur who found a niche, designed a new product or took advantage of an opportunity. These individuals are often technical people and suffer from the old 'Feast and Famine' syndrome that finds refuge in Micro and small businesses. When we're in Sales mode we are extremely busy, when servicing customers, prospects dry up... then we're found scratching around for business again which happens, eventually, months after we needed it.

Now typical business owners don't think of themselves as sales people and will readily admit they don't like this part of the business and yet without it the business can't survive. I've heard many a business owner admit they are not sales people, 'I'm basically too honest to be a sales person' as if a sales person's role was to somehow convince someone to buy a product they don't need and don't want. Well, let us now seperate Marketing from Sales.

Marketing is encouraging people to consider your products and services... visitors if you like, whereas Sales is the matching of the customers requirements to your offerings. At no point in this is there any pursuasion or manipulation... better still, much of this sales process can be automated with Internet Marketing. Marketing requires an audience to market too... sales requires us to provide information, substantiate our offering and provide a method to engage with us.

You will hear this time and time again with the Internet Marketing crowd... 'the money is in the list!' and if we are to market successfully then having a list to inform on a regular basis is absolutely essential. If we apply this to offline marketing, most of the hard work in sending out a mailshot was creating a quality list of people in the first place... our target audience! If we are to engage the services of a Direct Marketing company for a telephone campaign... at some point before this a list must be found, either from an existing database or bought from an organisation specialising in such Lists, the higher the quality the better.

So let us now see what relevance our Online - Internet Marketing acitivites have in identifying a target market. Consider Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter, Blog subscribers and Registrations for an ezine or other regular communication... what are these?

They are lists of course! lists of people who in some way have connected with you and are probably comfortable to receive correspondence from you or your business. Herein lies the secret then behind why we should bother at all to seek people out, follow and be followed. List building... and the good news is that it can be quite good fun too!

Now in our business we have 5 main products offerings... some of these products have an overlapping potential audience, others do not. It may be necessary therefore to have multiple accounts for Twitter and / or a seperate Facebook page for the different audience. Already you can see that if we are to manage, maintain and post for each product on a regular basis (desirable) then this is a substantial amount of work.

One of the difficulties that some of my colleagues have with building a large list of friends or followers is, 'How can you possibly keep in touch with all these people?, I struggle to stay in touch with my immediate relatives' and for sure, personally corresponding with 60,000 people is not viable... but this is not the point.

These social sites represent a massive network of interconnected people, you are not necessarily communicating on a 1-2-1 basis (although you can do this) but rather are broadcasting what you want to say to everyone who is connected and often to their immediate connections as well!! Suddenly we have the ability to get a message to a very large audience with a single post.

Now... most people certainly with Twitter won't see your post, and a good many won't in Facebook or Linked-In either, however this is not an issue. It is not our problem to worry about who will see our posting or not, that is not our responsibility and we should avoid getting attached to the outcome. Our role is to provide the information (post), that is it... Now there is a magic number in marketing and sales this is 3%. This little number is very important. It is the recognised average response rate in a cold market... sometimes it can be more, often less. If we sent out 1000 mailshots then it would be acceptable to set a benchmark of 30 as the number of positive responses. This is about the same % that I have experienced in responses to click-thru's on Tweets and Facebook postings. Taking these numbers if we tweeted with a follower list of 30,000 then we could expect around 900 visits. We have absolutely no idea which ones will click the link... or tell a friend or retweet, however the figures can be quite staggering... Imagine if you worked with other 'Big List' owners and offered a percentage to tweet to their lists... and you did this 3 times per day... the number of visits could become very large indeed.

The lists provide us with a 'potential market' for our products and the purpose of this article is not to go into the detailed techniques for building lists, only that it should be very high up on the list of priorities. So how much time, money and effort should be put into this exercise?

The answer to this question depends on the nature of a business, the ideal customer profile and many other factors, clearly a restaurant has a different set of requirements to someone selling a digital product (such as an ebook) globally. The first thing is to decide an Internet Marketing strategy which is complimentary to the business, once this is defined then the activities required become much clearer.

Once the basic Architecture of the marketing is defined then comes the work and the Investment. If I look at our business as an example, we have invested in three key areas, Colateral, People and services. Lets look at what is involved in each of these -:

Colateral

We have 5 blogs, 6 websites (some complex, some a single page), 7 Twitter accounts, Facebook (4 Business Pages), Linked-In, Ecademy, Hub Pages, Stumbleupon, Squidoo and other online social networking accounts, all these had to be set up, populated, and now managed on an ongoing basis. This is not something which can be done in 20 minutes per day. We have to work all of these resources on a regular basis to keep ourselves in the 'Public eye'.

People

We have invested in 1 full time person, plus both myself and another member of staff allocate 3 or 4 hours per day to Internet Marketing activities. Firstly staff require training to use the tools that enable us to work our internet marketing, including analyze results. These resources manage our social networking sites, engage with our contacts frequently, update profiles as things change and post new content constantly. This cost alone is over $3000 per calendar month, developing and building our online presence.

Services

We utilise a number of 'helper' services which are online and rented monthly, these include subscriptions to some Business Networks, Shopping cart and checkout services, Databases that contain sign-ups for ezines and regular communication, Membership platforms, Blogging services and many many more. None of these services are hugely expensive month on month but vital to continue our Online Marketing activities.

In Conclusion

Business Internet Marketing - Taking an offline business and using Internet Marketing techniques to increase sales utilises many of the techniques and tools that conventional Internet Marketing has developed and built over the past 8-10 years. We have all heard the stories of individuals with no overheads generating large monthly incomes without setting foot outside their door, but Internet Marketing is moving into a new phase, one where Offline Businesses will seek to engage the Internet to work for them.

I speak with many Micro and Small businesses on a regular basis and most are oblivious to Internet Marketing and what it could do for them, whether this is because no one has yet bothered to show them, or there is a fear and reluctance to dance with the unknown, or a bit of both perhaps. One thing is for sure, Business Internet Marketing will be deployed by every business over the coming 10-20 years and it is set to be one of the largest markets worldwide.

As we saw with offline marketing in the past where we had PR, Advertising and Marketing agencies, so we shall see the emergence of similar businesses offering Business Internet Marketing services. Traditional companies in this marketing space will need to evolve and offer a completely new range of services The print industry went through a similar metamorphosis some years back, when pre-press production moved entirely to computers and revolutionized the marketplace.

As the Internet Marketing industry matures and the 'Get Rich Quick' mentality fades, successful Internet Marketers will bring a wealth of experience and begin to offer professional Business Internet Marketing solutions to Small and Medium sized businesses. Not shackled with the conventional trappings of offices the Business Internet Marketers will manage a network of global outsourced resources to deliver high quality, low cost Internet Market solutions. The services will include the whole range of activities from setting up infrastructure services such as Blogs or Shopping carts to transactional activities such as managing Twitter accounts, searching and posting tweets, finding / posting suitable blog posts, even writing articles and sending email campaigns.

Without doubt we are on the edge of yet another evolution with the Internet. Some larger companies, such as IBM and Dell have already woken up to the power of using the Internet and Social networking to engage with a global audience, small businesses have been busy surviving the recession... but as the recovery gathers pace, I am sure that Business Internet Marketing will become an attractive proposition for many.

Was your childhood something like this?

2010-01-19T14:24:59+00:00

The article below was borrowed from Ross Holmes a 4Networking member who touches in this short piece about a great many hot topics. Hopefully we have not slipped already into the age where we can hear ourselves saying 'it was better in the good old days', God forbid ! However some important points are covered in this piece such as, taking a few risks, making mistakes, being responsible, taking action and learning how to succeed... Has childhood and youth improved? ... or are we now failing to prepare our children for the real lessons later in life... we are, where we are !

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and early 70's

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos...

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer. Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC, Subway or Nandos. Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on a Sunday, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O..K. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY , no video/dvd films, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms.........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
Lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in
us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time...

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or
rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet because we
didn’t need to keep up with the Jones’s!

Not everyone made the rugby/football/cricket/netball team. Those who
didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting
into the team was based on
MERIT

Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and throw the
blackboard rubber at us if they thought we weren’t concentrating .

We can string sentences together and spell and have proper
conversations because of a good, solid three R’s education.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and
'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned
HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL !

And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow
up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives
for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how
brave their parents were.

Written by : Ross Holmes (4Networking Member)

UK SMEs head to the cloud in 2010

2010-01-08T09:11:19+00:00

As a fan of 'Cloud Computing' or 'Software as a Service' even before the terms were invented, we here at Internet Power Systems have been quietly and steadily building a rock solid new and innovative Business Platform for Small businesses. Our Business Platform i-Tr@der can be found operating in companies as small as 1 or 2 people right through to household names like the building and construction giant Laing-O'Rourke.

Business owners are beginning to get comfortable that it is possible to run your entire business via the Internet these days and get rid of the IT hassle that has plagued us all for decades. Now we can concentrate on our own business instead of playing around with IT problems. With spin off benefits including, reduced costs, improved support, working from anywhere and backups included it is no wonder that coming out of a recession businesses will seek to stay lean and mean and adopt this technology.

To find out more about how this technology could work for your business, you can register for a Free copy of the e-book : In 2 The Clouds (author : Chris Ogle) by using the link on the right hand side of this blog. Just enter your name and email address before the 31st January 2010 to register for your free copy of the Book and to download an introductory chapter 'Running a Business Online'. The e-book will be released around the 18th January 2010.

Below Steve Evans comments on a recent survey which would indicate that the UK is ready to go "In 2 The Clouds"

Published:06-January-2010

By Steve Evans

But security and reliability still an issue

New research has revealed that just over half of UK SMEs expect to be using cloud computing by the end of the year.

The study, conducted by business ISP Easynet Connect, found that just over 50% of the respondents said that they planned to embrace cloud computing this year, up from 22% who responded in the same way when asked in October 2008. Long term on-demand computing is also set to increase, with 73% claiming they will adopt cloud computing within five years, up from 47% at the end of 2008.

The number of SMEs that have ruled out cloud computing has dropped from 53% in 2008 to 27% in 2009. it is larger SMEs (with 50+ employees) that are the most enthusiastic when it comes to cloud adoption, with 66% already using the cloud or planning to do so within 12 months.

Small businesses are also seeing the benefits of cloud computing. In 2008 35% believed that using the cloud would save them money and would enable employees to work from home, boosting productivity. Those figures have increased to 51% and 43% respectively in 2009.

“Cloud computing has been on the business radar for some time and our report proves that we are at the tipping point for mass adoption amongst small and medium sized businesses,” said Chris Stening, managing director, Easynet Connect.

The usual issues of security and reliability are listed as potential stumbling blocks to cloud adoption, although figures were slightly down on other similar surveys. Just under one in ten (9%) of respondents said that cloud computing wasn’t reliable enough and 13% said that it wasn’t secure enough.

The research was conducted in December 2009 and quizzed 255 IT decision makers at UK SMEs.

Demand for freelance staff soars, report claims!

2009-12-15T16:47:45+00:00

Following on from my recent post Freelance Workforce Set to Grow another report this time from PeoplePerHour suggests that the demand for freelance staff and in particular Sales People is soaring!

A growth in the demand for freelance staff has been fuelled by the recession, according to a recent report. PeoplePerHour.com, which is an online marketplace for freelancers and businesses, has published 'The Emergence of a Remote, Home-Based Salesforce' report, which indicates that demand for freelancers specialising in sales is higher than any other type of service. It attributes the rise in demand to small businesses cutting costs, while also looking to increase sales.

This is further confirmation of the acceleration in a general trend to a more flexible workforce where businesses decrease their investment in dedicated Staff and switch to using external 'job shops' to get tasks completed. For the business this means they buy the time and capability that they need rather than a whole person. For the freelancer they can often earn a higher hourly rate, have more diversity in their chosen occupation and work at a time and place that suits them!

The link below goes into more detail and would suggest that the area of freelance sales people is forging ahead and leading the field in remote home-based workers more than any other. My own opinion is that there are thousands of other freelances around the UK and the globe providing a myriad of services that are offered via networking groups, Internet Marketing techniques and personal referrals that are outside the remit of PeoplePerHour and this report.

One thing is definitely clear though... the business map is changing and at a rapid pace. Even in our own business here at Internet Power Systems, growth and business development in the future ahead will be realised through Joint Ventures (JV's) with external, motivated, enthusiastic, positive business people who take Action... every day. Businesses of the future will be the synergistic collaboration of like minded individuals working together on projects, who are not employed by a single corporate identity, and who can be spatially dispersed across the planet.

For those of us who enjoy variety, flexibility, the freedom to work in a place and time that suits us, with like minded gifted individuals the future looks very bright indeed !!

Full Report from PeoplePerHour here :- Freelance Sales Staff Boost SME's during the Recession

"Social Media" is it a Fad ?

2009-12-05T16:59:19+00:00

Do you (like millions of others) think Social sites like Facebook and Linked-in are a fad? Well you might like to reconsider...

Below this video has some highly interesting facts about Social Media and how it is effecting not only individuals but everything from relationships through to Brand building.

If we put our heads in the sand and ignore it... we do so at our peril. Ignorance can be very expensive and not just in monetary terms. We owe it to ourselves to at least understand what it is and how the world will change because of it.

Social Profiles allow the global population to connect, for people to find others similar to themselves and with common interests. It allows us to find out about people and see who they are, who they mix with and what they like doing. People buy people first, and without a social profile we are perhaps saying more about ourselves than you might expect !!

Freelance workforce set to grow, report claims

2009-12-01T17:49:29+00:00

This is an interesting report just released by the CBI suggesting that over the next 10 years there will be a significant change in the structure of the UK workforce brought about by a whole variety of factors from recession through to environmental considerations.

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) predicts a significant increase in the number of freelance workers in the UK as a result of changes to the way businesses operate over the next ten years. In its recent 'The Shape of Business: The Next 10 Years' report the CBI claims that flexible working will become the norm for many firms, which will lead to businesses employing a smaller core of permanent staff and a larger number of freelancers.

Actually the Internet is at the route of the changes which are afoot here. The internet and Cloud Computing gives rise to a much more flexible way of working. Individuals are now able to offer their talents and services to a wide audience through the Internet. Social Media sites provide the communication highway where people can hook up from literally anywhere across the globe.

People wishing to escape the corporate rate race or exchange a lifestyle, for example in London suburbia can uproot clear off to Cornwall and obtain a much higher quality of life and work collaboratively through the Internet. People are waking up to the possibilities of working where and when they want and there has been a vast increase in the availability of freelancers for just about any service or product that you could want for.

As Cloud computing takes hold within the Small and Medium sized business sector the ability to outsource tasks (via web based systems) will accelerate the process of hiring independent qualified freelancers rather than hiring staff. Debt collecting, Bookkeeping, Data cleansing and Business Administration will all be performed virtually over the web, reducing costs and improving efficiency. Whereas improved communications will mean Training, Graphic Design, Legal work, translation services and copywriting to name but a few can all be done from just about anywhere.

Small and Medium sized businesses will hungrily adopt this flexibility as a sensible way to manage staff levels (and costs) whilst retaining growth and profit potential and many tasks will be undertaken by people never met before, save on Social Networking sites such as Facebook or Linked-In. The importance of Social Networking and the availability of information will enable people to evaluate the suitability of new business partners in ways never seen before... but beware this is a double edged sword... lack of information of worse still 'bad information' could be highly damaging too!

Secondary factors like environmental considerations, reductions in journeys, less CO2, less wasted time in traffic hold ups, will push the use of new communication techniques such as Video conferencing and even simple free products such as Skype.

The Business world is definately changing, slowly at the moment but over the next 10 years a significant number of Small and Medium sized business owners will have made the switch to Cloud Computing and will be enjoying the Location Independent lifestlye that goes with 21st century business management.

Click here for the full CBI - Report on the shape of Business in the next 10 years

Nick Griffin (BNP) - On Question Time

2009-10-24T13:33:09+01:00

On the 22nd October 2009, saw the BBC host an edition of Question Time with David Dimbleby where the BNP leader Nick Griffin was invited to attend. This was a topic of huge debate the unsavioury policies of the British Nationalist Party (BNP) causing a week of discussion and media attention and even riots outside the BBC studios during the recording. But... the BBC invited Nick Griffin on or two reasons in my opinion, Nick Griffin had reached the criteria set by the BBC to be invited with over 1 Million votes as an EU member of parliament and it makes for good TV and marketing for the show itself.

Arguments against him being on the show are that his views are unsavoury, the party is Fascist and that their opinions and view are completely inappropriate to the multi cultural society in which we live. By his own admission Nick Griffin believes he is the most hated man in the UK even though he believes he has been much maligned and mis-quoted in the press.

So people are told constantly about the historical quotes of the BNP, the sympathy extended to Hitler and the failure to acknowledge the Holocaust... There is no getting away from it this man was a member of the National Front and has said these things... Nick would argue that he has changed, that he has taken the party from the radical days to a more acceptable face. For many the policies are still racist, divisive and create tension amongst ethnic minorities and religious groups.

So for the BNP we have a problem of integrity, trust and honesty, are we now looking at a more palatable veneer, a soft version of the truth with the real menacing agenda lurking behind? The critics of the BNP will say that a leopard doesn't change it spots, however let's not forget that the leaders of the IRA who were responsible for the deaths of a great many people are now an acceptable face of politics.

But if it is Integrity, Trust and Honesty that we demand from our politicians, where should we look for that? The populace has constantly been lied to over the years, the war in Iraq, Spending cuts and more recently still, many MP's caught with their hands in the trough over expenses. I'm afraid we've long since seen these credentials in any political party.

But the very presence on the show of Nick Griffin and the BNP raises some incredibly important questions. As a nation we are one of the foremost cosmopolitan countries on the planet, we are a tolerant bunch too! And we always favour the underdog, looking to protect those less fortunate than ourselves... and there is nothing wrong with these ideals at all.

I have spoken to some people who I meet regularly and just brought up this debate on question time and almost without exception I have heard that people think it is unfair that we protect and support almost every minority group over and above very often the people who are considered the regular / normal population of this country. This goes right back to housing being provided to immigrants and Asylum seekers who receive preference over people who have been on waiting lists for a very long time.

No one is against protecting the rights of minority groups to ensure they do not suffer at the hands of the majority, that is right and proper, but what Nick Griffin is saying is that we are now actually discriminating against the British people themselves! Now whether you agree or not, it doesn't matter what is important here is that a great many people support this view and that the only person talking about this... is Nick Griffin.. and we think he won't get more votes when there is no shining star in any other political party at present??

When Geoff Hoon commented on the rare subject of the evening not aimed at the BNP, the Daily Mail reporting of the sad death of Stephen Gately and their homophobic response contained within the article. Geoff Hoon said this just incites trouble against minorities it is exactly the type of thing we are trying to suppress, and this kind of reporting just doesn't help. We must protect minorities and allow them to be heard... and these are the same people who attempt to stifle the BNP, who, let's remember are a minority group, and who have a following, and have earnt the right to be heard. They will never get into power this is for sure, but the questions they raise are not myths or things to be brushed under the carpet, they are real concerns. If the major parties continue to dodge and evade these issues they will hand further votes straight over to the BNP. We all know why they evade these issues they are incredibly sensitive, however, face them they must, and soon. It will be a difficult path to navigate and require a very strong, brave person at the helm and they'll need to weigh up the voters they will lose by suffering at the hands of 'Political Correctness' against those they gain through finally tackling these incredibly important issues.

It is important to start with the 'end in mind' what is it that we want as the population map for our country? Would the voters perhaps support the following policies ?

Controlled Immigration to our country from those outside the EU
A system to count people in and count people out, so we actually know who is here
Proper Work Permit authorisation for those skills that we need here
Much better controls over Asylum seekers, if a person is seeking asylum and they are already in France aren't they already safe from harm, why do they need to come to the UK?
A much fairer distribution of Asylum seekers across Europe, everyone seems to want to come to the UK.
All people domiciled in the UK can stay
illegal immigrants are immediately deported
Any migrant who commits a crime is deported, including those from the EU
If we plan the growth of the population, then the appropriate infrastructure and social services can be in place to support it.

Would you support these policies? Then why is it we are struggling? why is it that these policies are only being put forward by the BNP? ... where to most of us it might seem like common sense. America has far stricter border controls than we do... is this the only thing that we have not followed the Americans on?

It is sure that whichever party tackles the above policies head on and delivers them will take the swing votes back from the BNP and prevent further voters heading that way. If one of the major parties devises a clear agenda on the immigration issue and seeks to appease the growing general concerns over 'fairness to all' not just ethnics and minority groups but the existing British citizens, then they will win the votes as a softer more acceptable face for achieving the desired results.

Sometimes the Liberal party are responsible for tabling ideas and policies which eventually find popularity and acceptance and become part of Labour or Conservative policy, the same is true with the BNP in this situation. Nick Griffin has created a Maelstrom, this is not something that can now be pushed into the background. He has raised the profile and put forward a challenge to the major parties... talk about these subjects and sort yourselves out or face the proposition of the BNP winning even more seats in the future.

Ironically although the programme showed us one, very unpopular man being beseiged from all sides, what we saw was an army of people levelling criticism and blame, but not one glimpse of an alternative solution on how they would tackle the issues raised.

The BBC, other political parties and the audience will hope that Nick Griffin's appearance on the show, and the slating that he received will undermine him and his party. Unfortunately for them it is likely to have the opposite effect. Real, normal, regular people can identify with these immigration issues and remember the British people have a tendency to support the underdog. Couple this with the publicity and media coverage of the past 10 days, Nick Griffin has finally for good or bad brought the BNP right onto the political scene.

Your Computer or Your TV? That is the question!

2009-10-05T15:42:29+01:00

If someone would have asked just 5 years ago if you had to throw out one thing either the TV or the Computer in most cases the TV would have stayed, today I think we would answer very differently....

Over the weekend I was preparing a list of tasks that I wanted to complete and sitting in front of my laptop computer it dawned on me about how far we have come in our use of computers in the past 10 years only.

Today our computers provide us with a diverse range of experiences and opportunities so wide that it is almost impossible to comprehend :-

Email - global instant electronic communication
Information resource far greater than any library at our fingertips
Social platform to keep in touch with friends and family
Place to meet new people, forums, dating sites
Work tool, Cloud computing solutions, designers, web sites, blogs, membership sites... Working as an employed person, running your own small business or even just keeping track of your own finances
Provides options to Enable people to work from home at a time to suit them
Entertainment platform, Browsing the Internet , Radio, TV, You Tube, Gaming
Communicate and engage with people in other countries at very low or zero cost... with video, so that we can see the people we are speaking to
Provides us with many ways to be creative and broadcast ourselves, Video, Audio, Pictures, social platforms, twitter, Blogs, forums
Earn money, outsourcing services, Affiliate Marketing
Manage our money - online banking / online trading
Shopping, travel....

The computer has become in the last 5 years a commodity item too! With prices of computers tumbling it has never been easier for people to get on board and experience the Internet.

Bill Gates and Microsoft have worked an amazing transition in the world by bringing easy to use computing to the masses. Now old and young alike are able to use the computer to carry out tasks such as paying bills, checking bank accounts and shopping. Now literally anyone can do it!

What has the next 10 - 20 years got in store for us? The explosion of the social networking scene will transform the amount of information which is accessible about individuals. We take for granted the ease of which we can search something up using Google and other tools... and this applies to finding out about people we meet too! If you can't be found on the Internet then what have you got to hide? or are you just out of touch... our online presence will become an important part of how we are seen in the world just as important as our real physical form.

For sure the world is moving quickly and with computers it moves much faster than in other areas. Whether we view the Internet as the human race volunteering to be in a 'big brother' society and distrust it with a vengeance, or see it as the opportunity of a lifetime and the most amazing time to be alive, is a matter of individual choice... personally I see it as a great enabler for many people and one which transcends class or creed.

Given time, energy, ethusiasm and effort, anyone can carve our whatever they want in todays online world. The internet has scant regard for the past, your current finances or who your parents are... it is all up to us, how we see it and what we do with this opportunity that is presented before us.

Why Gary Vaynerchuk is such a shining example?

2009-09-17T16:31:41+01:00

Ths book soon to be released in October is sparking quite a lot of attention and it's no surprise. Gary has taken his parents small wine store and turned it into a multi million dollar business. But in doing so Gary's 'exhuberance', 'loudness' and energy has made him stand out from the crowd. The Internet has taken Gary across the globe even without the need to travel, and the adoption of social media and internet marketing strategies at the core of everything has led to his phenomenal success.

So, we must wake up and listen... actually Gary's story has confirmed the path that we chose for IPS with our product i-Tr@der having joined the Money Gym last year. I spent 6 months finding out about Internet marketing, what it was, and how we could build our brands and marketing around this fast moving medium.

500 days in and I am convinced that Internet marketing is the most powerful form of marketing there is and that those who ignore it will perish in the wake of those that accept it.

Today, another milestone in the history of IPS we have taken on a new person whose responsibilities will include putting structure and measureability into our Internet marketing. We already have 4 products, i-Tr@der , Running a Business Online (e-book to come out shortly), BillBandit (our innovative receipt holder and expense management gadget) and Chris Ogle with others already in the pipeline.

We have up until now been blogging and twittering but like many people this has been fairly random and with no real measurability. We now need to be much more professional, we need to evolve and we need to start maximising our potential.

Each product will be taken in turn and a proper online strategy defined for them. This will involve establishing the websites and blogs in the first place or honing them if they exist. We will be laying out what tools we will use to keep traffic coming, such as Blogging, Twittering, Facebook pages, Article submission and Press releases. Then we will use tools such as Google Analytics to establish what happened and constantly record what is going on.

Our products and services are closely related so there is plenty of instances for effective cross fertilisation across the different websites and Blogs. Not only this there are many opportunities to work with other Internet marketers with JV's and Affiliate marketing schemes.

All of this activity will be dilligently monitored and measured so that we can see what is working and what is not and then feed this back into the deliverables and make the changes as necessary.

What has become abundantly clear to me whilst I have been working within Internet Marketing is that everything has changed and nothing has changed. People buy People first!!! It doesn't matter what is the medium this will always hold true. Social networking has accelerated the process of building a huge network, but the network comes back to a person more often than not.

Whether we like it or not the Internet has become the holy grail to find out about almost anything and this includes us. People want to know about who they are dealing with and this is just as important to potential customers as our products and services. Social Networking is now an integral part of doing business... just ask Gary Vaynerchuk !!

As we commence the Internet Marketing of our new invention BillBandit we are faced with the challenge of how can we expose the product to the widest audience, quickly and at the lowest cost? Consider this... what if I personally had a list of 50,000 people? what if I had 5 great contacts with 10,000 people on a list each... now we can start to see the importance of building our contacts... and... just as important building good relationships with other internet marketers!!

The value and net worth of individuals with big lists is rising fast... people power can be measured by how wide is their sphere of influence... their connectivity. How much can you influence with a few hundred people following you? The age of celebrity has taught us how mass exposure can transform an unknown into a worldwide sensation... check back with Susan Boyle a few months ago!

The good news is that it is not too late to start! If we have something of interest a Niche then we can begin to start a following today... But we must do it... as Gary Vaynerchuk says in uncertain times in the job market a big list of followers can make a huge difference to a potential employer, or ensure that you never need to take on a regular job ever again.

We are now entering the next phase of our business development here at IPS and BillBandit Ltd, applying Internet marketing to our range of products and services. I am 100% certain that my decision last year as a result of joining the Money Gym to use Internet Marketing for all our products and services has been completely vindicated. By now applying a professional, controlled approach, measuring and adjusting how we use all the tools at our disposal I am confident we will reach the high targets that we have set ourselves in the near future.

The Challenge of setting up a business today!

2009-09-12T14:13:00+01:00

If I reflect back in time, setting up a company from a computer systems perspective meant getting a local network installed in the office, setting up the email (in the late 80's early 90's this all started), getting accounting up and running, maybe contact management and then file sharing... and away we went...

Today it is very different......

As Cloud computing and Software as a Service begins its slow but innevitable transformation of the Software industry, there will no longer be a need to have an internal network setup, only to enable staff to connect to the Internet. The systems that are necessary to run a business can be run over the web such as the i-Tr@der Business Platform which handles all the primary business functions, email, bookkeeping, contact management and file storage / sharing. In many respects this makes computing easier for a business. No onsite server, no installation, no expensive IT people on the premises, better support, constant upgrades included, backups taken care off automatically and lower costs!

But this is only half the story to setting up a business in the modern era of the Internet World. Additionally, today, you must be operating an online Internet Marketing Strategy that compliments the running and management of the business. Now what does that mean?

Well coupled with the Business Management Systems going onto the Web under the umbrella of 'Cloud Computing' so all the marketing and sales tools have migrated there too. The world has changed, whether you have noticed it or not is another matter. To be competitive and to get our Faces, Names, Brands, Image, Products and Services in front of our competitors we have to use all the tools that enable that to happen, and they are on the Internet as Cloud Computing - Social and Networking services.

We have just taken a brand new business from an IDEA to a live operating online Retail website, this can be found at www.billbandit.co.uk, a complimentary business to our existing i-Tr@der Business Platform. The online presence and Internet based configuration and setup was by far and away the most complex process of the whole exercise, making the task of getting the product actually manufactured seem very simple indeed.

To get your new venture visible today, you need to have in place a website / blogsite with the appropriate domains, a twitter account, You Tube, Facebook, Linked In, Shopping Cart (if you are selling online), payment gateways (such as PayPal or Protex)... and you need to have thought about all the keywords for your business and made sure these are properly implemented everywhere for search engine optimisation. You will need to have the ability to collect names from the online facilities and build a list which can be used for ongoing marketing and making old customers new customers again.

All the above functions need to be integrated together for a complete online platform for your new business... this complex area describes the service that the Computer Systems Integration Businesses of tomorrow will need to provide. These are the skills that companies will be needing and bringing them together as a coherent offering will be the task of modern Computer Solutions providers. This new marketplace will be lead by those with an excellent knowledge of the key Web Based building blocks that make up the total business solution and, how to configure them for your business.

What will these new Computer Service providers look like? Well they will be very different to the old Computer companies of the past and today. The Internet will enable this to be populated by groups of independent business units each providing an element of expertise all collaborating through the Internet. This will be spearheaded by the Sales driven component which will take on the contracts and farm out the work to trusted business associates.

As a solutions provider ourselves and having just undertaken a business setup from an Idea to a real live business... I can now see very clearly how our software business will need to evolve and transmogrify going forward!