Any suggestions for our conference this year?

Following on from Gill's blog about meeting positive people, it's prompted me to start thinking about this year's conference. It's going to be held in London in November and we've decided to stick with the new format we introduced last year of shorter sessions during the morning and longer, more in-depth workshops in the afternoon. Every year we work hard to research material and speakers that are informative, relevant and provide the 'positive energy' that's generated from like-minded people coming together - if you've got any suggestions for topics and speakers for this year's event, please let us know!

Meeting positive people gives you energy

Meeting up with other people who have a positive attitude to life and business has given me a real boost over the last few weeks. I've been very lucky - attending a speed networking event run by the IOD in Reading, meeting up with a very positive group of Skillfair members in London, and topping all that off with a team meeting this week. The result has been that I feel really energised and have started tackling a whole range of challenges that I'd left on the back burner. So if you're not sure what you should do next, why not get out and about and pick up some energy from your fellow businesses? 

I'm booked to speak at quite a few events over the next few months so I'm hoping the energy will keep coming, if you're around Derby, Birmingham or Central London it would be great to meet up.

please don't use premium credit cards

Being an entirely online business we take all of our payments online - and over the last 18 months we've been hit by successive increases in the costs of credit card transactions - each transaction costs us around 3.5% of the gross payment (including the VAT) and the percentage has increased steadily. It's always amazed me how much public discussion of credit cards only talks about the interest rate charged to customers and ignores the fact that the banks now take a cut on almost every retail transaction in the UK.

This morning I've had yet another letter from my 'friendly' bank saying that any transactions on premium cards will cost an extra 0.7%. 

This is affecting all retailers, on and off line - so if you want to keep your money out of the banks clutches please avoid the premium card - and you'll be helping the retailers too.

Useful social marketing sites and tools - can you add any?

One of the most useful aspects of our on-line marketing workshop last night was being able to pick up on new facilities and websites that other people suggested. This table is a summary of all the ones we discussed - if you have any others please let us know.

Google	Search Engines  -The amount and quality of your content is important in making sure your site or blog is indeed. Links to and from other related sites are also useful
Bing (Microsoft’s new search engine)
Yahoo
MSN
Wikipedia	An authoritative site with definitions of just about everything. Look and see if a subject you know about is in need of an editor – but be careful to be unbiased and non-commercial in what you say
Delicious	bookmarking sites where people can search for articles and blogs.
Digg
Twitter	A micro-blogging site – people post 140 character messages about what they’re doing. You can follow people you find interesting and other people can follow you.
Google Buzz	Google’s version of Twitter
Facebook	Used heavily by teenagers and increasingly adults to run their social lives. Post events, pictures, messages and play games
LinkedIn	Much used by professionals, particularly those looking for work. Can post a detailed CV, start discussion groups, post events etc. There are many LinkedIn groups for professional disciplines and other organisations – or set up your own.
Viadeo	Similar to LinkedIn – some different features on each. Generally business oriented
Naymz
ecademy
YouTube	Video sharing site – great time waster!
FlickR	Photo sharing
MySpace
Free index	Business directory and forums for small business
Hotfrog	Free Business directory
Plaxo	Online contacts/address book
Hi5	Like facebook but (allegedly) more fun

Wordpress	Sites that allow you to build a blog very quickly – just subscribe and you can have a blog within a few minutes. Then you just need something to say!
Typepad
Blogger
joomla
Technorati	An index of blogs – mainly US dominated
Feedburner	A way of providing people with feeds from your blog/twitter account
Moonfruit	Template based website building sites
Webeden
google
Crazyegg	Shows a heatmap of your website, tells you where people click
Google analytics	Shows you how many people visit and what they look at
Google Wave	Tools to help you collaborate with partners and clients eg share calendars, co-edit documents
Google Wiki
Huddle
Tweetdeck	Have multliple twitter personalities and/or searches going
Twitterfeed	Link your blog or website feed into twitter
Hootsuite	Similar to tweetdeck - Other twitter clients here http://www.twitstat.com/twitterclientusers.html
friendfeed	Allows you to pull together feeds from friends and display in one place
slideshare	A place to share slide presentations on LinkedIn
Xobni	Link your Outlook email to LinkedIn – similar facilities are also part of the next release of Office.

Would tenders say anything without the banned words?

Just seen a post about a new list of 'banned words' that IdEA say shouldn't be used in public sector communications. The list builds on an earlier version here - trouble is for a lot of the tender we post if you removed these words they quite possibly wouldn't say anything at all!