Entrepreneurship and business are all about solving problems with great ideas. I always say that a good entrepreneur is somebody that can jump out of a plane and create the parachute on the way down. When I started my first business, I was a fearless boot-strapper who was lucky enough to be living with my parents at the time (being 15 years old).

What about if you want to take the plunge on your big idea but you have outgoings, maybe a family or the rent to pay? Going full-time to fearlessly pursue your big idea can feel like a huge daunting task, with the banks ceasing to lend unless you risk every bit of capital you have (if you’re lucky to have any); it feels like a scary place to be!

Through the work I do, I’ve been asked to help promote a competition by Orange to help you Win Your Business. The prize is worth up to £200,000 and includes not just investment capital (money), but legal advice, business planning advice, mentoring, and marketing consultancy.

In their own words “Orange are proud to support different businesses all over the country – now, we’re  looking for the UK’s next different business. If you’ve got a fresh idea, why not tell Orange all about it and you could win a year’s backing and support to make it happen!”

It takes creativity, adaptability, and fearlessness to beat the competition, but you need to be different: you need to stand out and do things differently. Orange understand this because they’ve always been different. Launching in 1994 into a competitive market, great ideas have punctuated their history, from being the first mobile company to charge calls by the second, to offering something entirely different like 2 for 1 cinema tickets and pizza deals, Orange fully understand the importance of standing out and leaving the competition playing catch-up.

They are giving you the chance to follow in their footsteps. Your different business ideas could become a reality. Naturally, Orange aren’t just handing out cheques. They’re making sure you have the support, advice and investment to get you on the road to success and change your life forever. Their panel of judges includes some of the UK’s most successful business leaders – tell them about your innovative new idea and you could become the UK’s next different business.

They’re looking for a different idea, different approaches, clear strategies – something that is worth funding.

Good luck, please share this competition and if you need any advise on your big idea, just Tweet me here.

http://www.ebuzzing.co.uk/rd/38823_4630_609215_41736_33973_71351/www.winyourbusiness.com

Sponsored Post

It’s a glossy video that has Hollywood qualities, made by charity Invisible Children, this Youtube success story was seeded into Twitter and exploded from there. By the end of the first day this video had received over 3 million Youtube views.

The video features key attributes that make a successful viral. It begins with very emotive scenes of child-birth and unconditional happiness, it even features humor with film maker Jason Russell’s son bringing a smile to the viewer’s face. But very quickly this video takes a turn the dark-side gripping its viewers with a scene of a child and soldier sending shivers down your spine.

Most successful virals tend to be short, few are less than 30 seconds long. Nine out of Ten of the all time most popular Youtube hits are also music videos.

So what made this video such a hit?

• Viewers are shown ‘Share’ buttons in the first few seconds almost subliminally, now i’m not a psychologist, but one could hazard a guess this helps plant that seed.
• This video is emotive, its a roller-coaster of happy to sad to shock
• Film maker Russell invites the viewer to participate in an experiment, and the use of the word ‘We’ and ‘Us’ instantly builds a sense of community and is very personal
• Another point to note is a younger Russell from a clip a few years ago makes a ‘promise’ to a child, and I personally was amazed he could make such a promise, you feel that you almost want to help
• The end of the video provides clear instructions on how you can help, leading with financial ones first, then powerfully suggests that the least you can do is ‘Share’ the video
• There has also been critics who are shouting that the facts are wrong, this sort of debate and emotive reactions are simply more fuel to the fire for this social media blaze.

This is my verdict live on the 10pm news for Al Jezeera TV

There’s a lot if interest in Pinterest, and I’m sure I’m not the first blogger to say that. But it is true; Pinterest is the new buzzword in social media, even though it has been around for nearly 2 years now.

Below I’ve prepared a glossary of terms for you newbies and on the CrowdControlHQ Blog on Monday I will be reviewing how you can use Pinterest for your brand and how our software works with Pinterest!

The Pinterest Glossary

Pins – Pins are images from around the web or those uploaded from your PC that are then added to Pinterest.

Boards – Boards are collections of pins. Just like a noticeboard in your office, it can have lots of Pins attached to them. Boards are sorted into subjects like architecture, cars, weddings, interiors or brands.

Repin – To repin on Pinterest is to copy a Pin to a different board, such as one you have created yourself, you could move a lovely plant from a board called ‘Green things’ to your own board called ‘For my garden’.

Like – You also have the option to “like” a pin. When you “like” an image it is added to the Likes section of your profile, but is not added to one of your boards or shared with your followers.

Pinner – A pinner is a user of Pinterest.

Follow a pinner – On a user’s profile you can either follow just one of that Pinner’s boards by clicking the “follow” button at the bottom of the board. Or if you’d like to follow everything a user pins, click the “follow all” button under their profile picture.

Mention a pinner – Just like Twitter, you can mention fellow Pinterest users in the comments of your pins by using the @ symbol and the username of the pinner you want to mention.

And of course, follow me on Pinterest here.

As you may know, I am the co-founder of social media software CrowdControlHQ. Part of our software allows brands to understand the metrics and data around their Facebook pages. Recently Facebook made a change to some of their metrics, therefore I thought it might be handy if I gave you a summary here courtesy of one of our developer.

Some of the metrics have been removed, and some new ones were introduced. On the 15th of February 2012, the data for the removed metrics was permanently deleted. Here’s a roundup:

Demographics

While the ‘active users’ were all the users who viewed or clicked on any content on your brand’s page, the new metrics introduced the ‘storytellers’. Storytellers are those people who engaged with the page and as a result a ‘story’ about their engagement appeared on someone’s news feed. Engagement that generates stories includes any of the following actions: posting on the brand’s timeline, commenting on a post on the brand’s page wall, liking content on the brand’s wall, mentioning the brand page or checking on the Facebook place set up for your brand.

Sources

Facebook will not provide sources for comments or likes anymore, but instead has introduced a detailed breakdown of how your fans are distributed:

- Page suggestion: People who liked your page through an invite from an admin
- Timeline: People who liked your page from the likes section of their own timeline or someone else’s
- Ads: People who clicked “Like” in an Ad or Sponsored Story pointing to your Page
- Registration: People you added to your page as admins will be a separate category
- Mobile: People who liked your page from a mobile device
- Wizard suggestion: People who liked your page in the New User Wizard when registering for Facebook
- Profile connect: People who liked your page on the page itself or in a News Feed or ticker story
- External connect: People who liked your page from an external site using a Facebook social plugin
- Recommended pages: People who liked your page from a Recommended Pages unit on the right column of Facebook
- Favorites: Other brand pages that have liked your page
- API: People who liked your page through an app developed by a third party
- Page browser: People who liked your page using Facebook’s Page Browser
- Hovercard: People who liked your page from the pop-up window they get when they hover over a link that leads to your page
- Search: People who liked your page from their search results
- Page profile: People who liked your page on the page itself
- Ticker: People who liked your page from a story they saw about it in Ticker
- Like story: People who liked your Page from a story they saw about a friend liking it
- Video flyout: People who liked your Page from a video flyout
- Page creation: People who liked automatically by creating your Page
- From coupon: People who liked your Page from a coupon

Engagement

Facebook insights will not explicitly provide the number of posts, comments, likes, link clicks, photo views, video plays anymore. Instead the link clicks, photo views and video plays and other clicks can be found under the number of consumptions which represent engagements that did not generate a story in a news feed. The exact number of posts, comments or likes as well as the number of people that did these actions will not be available directly, but under an aggregated form: the number of stories that were generated by each of these actions.

Negative Feedback

Perhaps the most important change to Facebook’s insights is the introduction of the concept of negative feedback as a result of an engagement. Negative feedback includes the following types of actions:

- People that hide all stories related to a brand page
- People that hide a certain story
- People that unlike a brand page
- People that report an object as a spam

Our software will reflect these changes in the way it collects Analytics for your social media activity. We will also continue to provide the number of both incoming and outgoing posts, comments, post likes or comment likes, which won’t be visible directly from the Facebook Insights anymore.

Hiring a new employee is a risk and releasing a press release is a risk. We know that right? Social media isn’t any different. Brands and organisations that are looking to make their mark within the world of social media need to be aware of the potential pitfalls and problems which may be encountered through attempted outreach to fans through such a medium.

So how can you reduce the risk of social media?

Policy – Don’t shut your employees up, inspire them to speak and teach them when not to.

Manage your online reputation – use our software or anyone elses for that fact, but just make sure you’re keeping an eye on what people are saying, and where they say it.

Don’t dilute your message – grow your social media presence using your existing customers. Don’t forget your values when you begin to market your product to a wider audience. Remember your core fans/customers.

If you’d like to read more about my thoughts on social media and risk, you can check out a guest blog I wrote here for SmallBusiness.co.uk.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on social media and risk, please tweet me @calumbrannan or comment below

My first TV appearance, you can see my views on the new Facebook and Google+ here.