Meerkats in Suffolk show entrepreneurial way

Fresh fields, right preparation leads
 to green shoots, hopefully
Allotment society I have been involved with in the past

Started 5th January 2011  2.30 pm
Words 852

The secret is out.  The Meerkats website has been gathering dust in Suffolk all along. Reported in the East Anglian Daily Times today Aleksandr Orlov's latest kinematic extravaganza (advert) was filmed in Suffolk at Kersey.  I noticed this story as I leafed through the paper having a look for  the those events and news on social and  micro-entrepreneurship and the general job market.  If it's good enough for Mr Orlov to do business in Suffolk. then .......... Simples.

Joking apart this blog has started a little later in the day then intended.  This is not due to any technical mishap but a success in the use of social networking in generating business opportunities.   The Strategy I have been employing has started to generate conversations that can lead to income generating activity.  Owing to technical problems with BT, my strategy of generating content in a dynamic blog backed up with  non-identical twinned static sites really only started on 21st December 2010.

Since that day (16 days ago) the blog has generated 500 page views.  Which is not too bad on a free website that I am only starting to optimise for journalistic style so that it is search engine friendly.  It also has to be remembered that people have not been at their desks. The majority of blog surfing that is attributed to company time has not been available. 

From the traffic that has visited the site 4 new opportunities so far have presented themselves since yesterday morning when people returned to work. These have not been solicited by me writing letters, emails or sending CVs.  People have seen something in the Blog that has made them think the skill set on offer may add value to their activities and to make the first step and contact me.

Using traditional methods to generate five hundred opportunities for people to  view the skill set would have taken 2 to 3 hours of company research, adapting CV typing a cover letter etc.  So 1000- 1500 hours ( 25 to 37.5 working weeks of 40 hours duration) would have been required to generate that number of view opportunities.  In the terms of time spent blogging under the revised strategy the 500 view opportunities have taken 8 hours (half an hour targeted time).  The validity of the strategy therefore would appear to be tenuously proven.  Refining of the content and the style of the Blog to optimise the yield of contacts to view opportunities is the next step.

The application of these techniques therefore appear to be a good additional tool in the armoury when considering career change.  The principles also are applicable to marketing of products that have added value that is price independent, ie the cheapest is not necessarily better than somebody elses. 

So as I leafed through the paper I came across an event that if I was not otherwise pre-booked I would have attended,  This is the University College Suffolk (UCS) Event Social Entrepreneur.  A very laudable event being held at Trinity Park a show ground I have been to on a number of occasions.  The only slight problem is that booking is recommended, but there is no contact details to book in the advert. I cannot find anything on the show grounds' events board or at the UCS site.  I hope this is just a slight oversight as it does look as though it may provide a handle on what social entrepreneurship might look like.  

On this blog I am going to include a new to me site I have found called Dipity.   This allows timelines of events to be put in a social network format.  This is useful not only for education in the traditional sense of making timelines but also in running a diary.

So next few hours will be spent brushing up my HTML skills (they have got a bit rusty recently).  I have both a Dummies guide (I'm not proud!)  to just remind in almost bullet points of the key skills.  I do not often watch James May just in case I recognize some of the Last of the Summer Wine type activities in myself that he seems to be slipping into.  However, he did in his programme about his sister's toys show the Ladybird book How computers work that the Ministry of Defence ordered with plain brown covers to instruct people in the basics of the new technology.  The Dummies series is much the same ilk, so I'm quite happy to follow the MOD's lead.

If you would like a more detailed explanation of some of the techniques I am starting to use in social networking follow the link to 2pointfiveageofman.nett or kritirecharge.co.uk.


Open the email page or contact us.  Supply your details and I should be able to send you a PDF file in the net few days.

Tomorrow's Blog is about topics related to Wellbeing.  This is the last topic of the week in the new Strategy plan.  So I will start again on Friday by looking back over the week.