C21 Consulting Ltd

Useful article I found on Entrepreneur.com for those who are exploring using social media to promote their business.

The Dos and Don'ts of Social Networking - Use these tips to maximize your time and get the most out of your online efforts.

We all know that fear can have devastating effects on your business.  The more you fear your commercial environment, the outcome of your decisions and the future, the more your fear will place a strangle-hold on your decision-making capacity.  Eventually, this fear will inhibit on of the most important dynamics at play within any business or organisation - the power of momentum.  In short, fear can paralyise you and subsequently your business.

Have you ever been forgotten?  I am so absent minded at times.  On one occasion I shamefully admit that I left my son at church one evening and went home without him.  “That’s terrible!” I here you think.  Yes, but we all saw the funny side to it later on.

Today's business world is less trusting than one could argue it was say 20 or 30 years ago.  Marketing spin, fancy wording and so on are often treated with contempt and seen as empty rhetoric when it comes to how your customers might see you.

At the end of the day, however well you present your business, however fancy your brochure or expensive your branding exercise, what really matters is ARE YOU DELIVERING WHAT YOU SAY YOU ARE?

The other day I had the misfortune to find myself in a Birmingham City Centre Travelodge Hotel where I experienced the night from Hell.

I think the people in the room next door must have been operating on a different time zone to me as they were partying to the max at 2am in the morning.  With screaming, shouting, running, banging and laughing in abundance I was quite sure that a contingent from the night's West Bromwich game had decided to 'celebrate' at my expense.

If you are anything like me, you draw your inspiration from a multitude of different people, both past and present. Over the years I have been inspired by many people, many of whom I will never meet. People like Churchill and Ghandi spring into our minds when thinking of great leaders who catalysed change. In my own life many of the people that I have worked with have been a great inspiration to me and helped to keep me moving forward when everything with me was crying ‘it can’t be done!’. Having said all of that, the person I have chosen as my ‘s

Twitter is like a huge cocktail party happening around you, with all kinds of people chattering about all things business and personal. But at this party you can hear what everybody is saying — without having to race around to listen to all the conversations.

Take a look at this interesting article from Microsoft on the use of twitter.

Click Here.

Having run businesses myself both past and present, I know how easy it can be to get caught up in fire-fighting and crisis management.  As the business owner or person in charge it seems at times that the more you look into what is going on in the business, the more you find that really frustrates you and the more you feel yourself getting dragged into detail you were never meant to be involved in.

Anyone leading an organisation faces this challenge on a day-to-day basis.  How do I take the business forward and keep myself from the madness of micro-management.

Every week I spend at least five hours on the phone interviewing my client's customers.  Most of this research is intended to help my clients understand their customer base and increase customer satisfaction and drive sales.

Harvard Business IdeaCast 173: How Enterprise 2.0 Will Reshape Your Business - Featured Guest: Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at MIT's Center for Digital Business and author of "Enterprise 2.0." Copyright 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing [Hardvard Business]
Enterprise 2.0 is changing the way we do business.  This audio fle will give you some insight into how this is taking place.