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How can Ingenious Britain continue to help SMEs in 2013? You suggested, and now we answer!

Category: Inside Ingenious Britain | 28 February, 2013 11:09

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Recently, we ran a competition in which the IB community got to suggest one thing with which we can improve if we’re looking to continue to help small businesses through the rest of the year.

We’ve collated as many as we could, and here’s what we’re going to do about them:

1.     Many people asked us to provide a service in which we champion a small business in detail, perhaps once a week; whilst also providing ‘real’ business stories.

We already provide a #SmallBusinessOfTheWeek, in which we promote and celebrate one small business we love across our social channels, but we’ve now altered it slightly to create a #SmallBusinessOfTheMonth, which will allow us to formally interview the company, and provide a more in-depth idea into what they do, their challenges and the triumphs they’ve experienced.

We believe it’s incredibly important to hear from genuine businesspeople like you or ourselves, and we’re also looking for any submissions which small businesses would like to contribute to our ‘Reader Stories’ section of the site. If you’re interested, send us an email and we’ll get this show on the road!

We also have plans to provide a ‘Recommendations list’ for specific sectors on the website, but this is in the pipeline.

All of the information is detailed in this article here: http://bit.ly/Y05mXz.

2.     You’d like us to create a separate legal section on the site, whilst having more information on start-up admin, open data and R&D tax credit claims.

We used to have a legal section on the site, but when we created our new website, we figured that in a time in which traditional forms of funding weren’t cutting the mustard, that we’d introduce an ‘Alternative Finance’ section to provide an outpost for forms of funding you may not even have considered yet. And by and large, it’s been a success (it’s our most viewed individual section on the site).

Of course, we need to highlight the legal aspects of setting up and maintaining a business, but these are all posted under the ‘Management’ section of the site. We’re making a concentrated effort to provide more content on legislation and the legal facets of owning a business, and we’ll provide more articles on admin/open data/tax credits too in the near future.

3.     You’d like us to maintain the networking, ‘togetherness’ feel of Ingenious Britain, but take it to the next level.

At IB, we maintain that one of our strengths is the community feel we have on our social networks, where anyone can chip in or ask for advice on anything which may concern them about business.

So, to take this to the ‘next level’, we’re incorporating a bespoke ‘#IBHour’ on Twitter next Monday (March 4th), from 8-9pm, and will continue to do so once a month. The idea is that small businesses can connect with IB and each other, whilst discussing on a specific topic – which we’ll identify beforehand. The first session is simply an introductory ‘Hello! Who are you, and what do you do?’ hour, but we’ll move it on in consequent months. All of the further details are here: http://bit.ly/Y05mXz, but ensure you follow @IBHour, as this will be the vessel we’ll use to engage on Twitter.

We’re also in the process of building up our Pinterest boards, and our Google+ profile, to strengthen the community feel across the web; our LinkedIn group for small business networking and support is booming too, if you fancied joining: http://linkd.in/Vspn9f.

4.     You’d like specific Q&A sessions with experts, on topics pertinent to small businesses.

We’d love to incorporate one or two Q&As a month – we’ve noticed that the Guardian Small Business Hub has been doing these weekly to much success and inter-engagement, whilst providing loads of useful information – and accordingly we’ll try to follow on from our successful #EnergyExperts Q&A with Make It Cheaper in January (have a look at the research we did with them, because there’s some eye-opening stuff!).

We’re working on providing a platform on the site to offer a central hub with which to offer these Q&As, but for the meantime, we’ll incorporate it into our Twitter feed once a month. So keep your eyes peeled, because the wheels are in motion for the first one in March!