Having set myself the challenge of writing only positive posts for two weeks my output on this blog has dropped. This tells me that much of which I had to write about has been silly things the "unpaid" local "authorities" (also known as councillors or pocket people) have been saying and the dire things other money grabbers have been up to. I'm a little sad that I've not had more positive things to say.

Rather than wallow in self pity and ignorance of what we have going for us I've been trying to improve my grasp of local resources. It was in doing so that I discovered that the faceless body of work so often attributed to TDC is more likely funded and run from the shadows by KCC, businesses co-operatives and other interested parties with lots of cash. To be honest I've been hard pressed to see exactly what it is the council does at all (other than cost us money).

I have also discovered something else - a need. A need that any right thinking businessman with sufficient investment capital could easily convert into a profitable venture. Even TDC would be hard pressed to screw it up.

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» Continue Reading: Filling A Thanet Need

I have always felt that Thanet has great potential if only we ourselves would support it. I have written a number of times about "supporting the little guy" and as part of this have been looking for ways to do this. One way was the Thanet Finder (search engine for Thanet) but I have been looking for other ways.

I have now found a way to add Thanet eBay listings to a site. On article pages below the comments there will now be a listing of products from Thanet based sellers (as well as strongly themed Thanet content).

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» Continue Reading: Thanet Star: supporting local sellers

I want to follow up on some surprise results that Tony and myself have briefly discussed in the comments section. In "To get ahead in business - ask a blogger" I shared how the blogging community seemed to be ahead of the game when it comes to third party ranks and metrics that measure the traction of your website. I'm still not convinced that I did not miss something but I want to explain why it matters.

The numbers tell a story, they indicate how well you are playing "the game" and the game is different depending on your aims but the numbers remain the same. Whatever reason you have a website for it has to meet one of the 5 Goals of a Business Website. The numbers tell us how well we are meeting those aims.

That is why they matter so much. When you goal is money the biggest indicator is how much but when the goal is attention they is rarely money as a good measure. So these other numbers start to mater. A lot.

Matt Bacak (another Matt B) explains more:

I was interested to see how Thanet and Kent's business websites stacked up so I took a few well known sites as control subjects and then added in local business websites that have all recently been recommended to me or known to me in some way. What I found was quite surprising.

To make things far I used as many metrics as possible to measure the success of the websites in terms of traction and penetration. the metrics I used were Alexa Rank, Google Page Rank, Google Back Links, Yahoo Back Links, Technorati (reactions, authority and rank) and Compete Rank. Each of these scores works differently for example with most of the rank based scores lower is better but a 0 is a total fail.

I chose Thanet Star (obviously) along with the TDC website, the Thanet Blog List and the website of a local photographer.  These would be my control entries against which we could measure the success of the websites in question.  What I did not expect was to have these sites dominate the results quite utterly.

I only wanted to use a smallish number of sites so I chose custwin.co.uk a business promotion business along with webdandy.co.uk and the first client they linked to afritrans.co.uk to compare with this I added webz4biz.biz who created the Thanet Business Network website. So I had two web designers and a client each. I added to this mix Boys and Maughan (local solicitors) and the Sure Start Millmead website (local non profit).

The resultant tables might surprise you.

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» Continue Reading: To get ahead in business - ask a blogger!

The business world has changed. The only thing keeping Thanet's present Jurassic form going is that it is yet to notice. "Marketing and Sales" are, like the beheaded chicken, dead yet still moving.

"We are immune to advertising. Just forget it."
Article 74, 95 Theses, Clue Train Manifesto

What I hope to outline in today's post very few of Thanet's businesses are ready to grasp. Some are already aware of this but for the large part these are businesses that are small enough to still be nimble. There is no reason why the small and alert business can not take over quite completely from the large entities that need such artificial things as WestWood Cross, full page adverts and sales scripts.

Are you ready to learn the secret of Thanet's new market place?

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» Continue Reading: Thanet's Business World has Changed

A Case Study

What is the single biggest failure of the entire market place today? The thing that is so pandemic in places like Thanet that wealth has no chance of being developed. The thing that keeps Thanet poor?

Undervaluing the intellectual and human resources of the company - the workers themselves. This is so common today that entire market sectors and niches are filled with businesses that could be doing ten or twenty times better then they already are but have opted instead to grind what they have to nothing. As a result customers are being forced to pay extra to maintain growth while employees are paid a fraction of their true value.

The result is poverty. Poverty for the company and poverty for the people too. Lets take a look at a couple of examples: Tony Flaig and a friend of mine that we will call Tim Smith. I believe that at an average both are worth a minimum of £30 to £40 an hour to their industry plus a range of fairly hefty bonuses; if only their employers would realise.

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» Continue Reading: Do you know what keeps Thanet poor?

I want to outline here an introduction to an idea that I hope to expand much more extensively over the coming weeks. I am going to be addressing the business attitude and market environment of Thanet in general terms. I am aware there may be exceptions.

We are no living in the 21st Century and the technology readily at our disposal allows instantaneous communication with the entire market sector. It allows our records and our data to be analysed in minuets to a level that might take a team of experts a year or more. We can have meetings where attendees are in Rome, New York, London, Paris and Berlin (for example). Why, then, in Thanet are we finding it so difficult to engage in even the simplest ecommerce?

In theory we have the manufacturing power already operational in the area to be a world player. We have plastics, aerospace, electronics and dozens of other key industries right here in Thanet, more in Kent and the surrounding area. We have access via road and air to the rest of the world. What, then, is it that keeps us poor?

What keeps Thanet unproductive and weak is fear. In this article I will be looking at what this fear is and how we can overcome it. This answer is not for everyone.

Many business leaders are comfortable with the lack of forward motion. They would rather engage in practices of unproductive "manager masturbation" where lots of paperwork is completed and talking done but no actual profit is made. It's like a Jurassic Paralysis that is trying to suck us back through time.

Only those business men willing to evolve their business thinking are going to see their businesses flourish where others fail.

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» Continue Reading: The Business Stone Age - An Introduction

Ask.

No, really, asking for things is the single best way to reduce bills. Ask for a discount and the worst they can say is "no". The best is "yes".

I put this to work today when I phoned my bank.

"Is there anything else I can do for you sir?" asked the person on the other end of the line (they ask this until you say "no").

"Yes, please." said I. "I'd like to pay less interest."

After explaining using alternative words what I meant (this was after all a call centre in India) I was put on hold.

Two minutes of waiting and I had reduced my APR by 4.2 - not bad for a moments asking. My credit card is now cheaper than my overdraft so I think I will have another word with my bank shortly.

In a recent post entitled "The Future of Thanet" in "The Big Blog" Adem raises some interesting questions. Prime among them is what can we actually do about the decline Thanet is facing.

"Most of the local blogs or the newspaper articles I read point towards an area in steep decline but surely there is something we can do? On face value it appears that there is nothing we can do, but that is me being pessemistic, and just because the council are happy for the towns to die doesn’t mean that we should be."
"The Future of Thanet", Adem, 14th February 2008

I mentioned in the comments something I have said before - we bloggers hold a lot of power (by which I mean influence) if only we allowed ourselves to discover how to use it. The only person I can be sure to influence is myself. This is true for everyone.

So rather than moan about the state of the area I intend to take action and this is what I prose to do

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» Continue Reading: I'm giving away £50 in resources

Although Thanet Star has announced the One Pound Advert offer I will be running a series of additional offers and bonuses shortly. Before that I want to look at some of the issues involved in running an on-line advertising campaign. Specifically I want to look at what your website will need in order to make sales in any economic environment.

I do not think it matters if you have heard some of these common sense basics of online business before because we can all do with a refresher. Selling, especially in an economically depressed area like Thanet, is never easy. To close that sale you need to show how you and your product meet a need and frankly most business websites fail totally to even be in the right ball park.

I don't want to just sell you a few adverts I want to help you to use those adverts to make sales. This is something I can do reasonably for you but it is something that you will do best. I want to help you get the best from advertising on Thanet Star.

To do this we are going to look at the needs of the "average" Thanet resident and how you can meet this to create sales and leads through your website. I want to help you to boost the communication, sales planning, market knowledge, appeal, visibility and, of course, consumer confidence in and of your online marketing effort.

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» Continue Reading: Building a website that sells