The Federation of Small Businesses has launched a ‘Good News’ section on their website.

“Amid all the bad news about the economy, the banks and business closures there are some small businesses out there bucking the trend.

The FSB has found some examples of positive statistics and achievements amongst its members of small businesses who are beating the recession.”

There are great individual success stories here, which demonstrate that even in a tough market there is still room for enterprise and achievement.

Email the FSB if you have a success story.

Source: Microsoft Small Business

Two interesting websites we’ve recently discovered – WiRE – Women in Rural Enterprise  “WiRE is an organisation for rural women in business, offering a dynamic member package of practical and specific business services and support” and Women Unlimited:  “Our aim is to be a catalyst for change and to double the percentage of female entrepreneurs in the UK over the next 20 years.”

Women could be the way forward  - this is the story headline from an article on the BBC website. “"Women have a huge amount to contribute to business at top levels. There are barriers holding them back," says Lord Mandelson, Britain’s Business Secretary, speaking at a ‘Women in Business’ event last week. According to their press release “In the UK, women’s enterprise contributes an estimated £60 billion to the UK economy each year. Christine McCafferty, MP Parliamentary Patron of Women in Business, said:

“Promoting Women in Business is a crucial issue, not only for our economy but for society as a whole. It is not simply a matter of equality of opportunity but an economic imperative, if we are to capitalise on the potential women have to offer our regional and national economies.”

Everywoman is another female-oriented website and there are no doubt many more we’re not aware of.

Source: Microsoft Small Business

The market’s tough, the competition’s tough. Small businesses are having to work very hard to get by in the current climate and need to grab every chance they get to be more competitive.

We’ve got a new section on the website – Be Competitive -  that could help you and your team get more from your software. Whether that means devoting half a hour a week to brushing up your Office skills (see the new 60-second business insider videos), investing in new technology to help you become more productive, or making more use of Office templates, there are steps you can take to improve competitiveness.

Source: Microsoft Small Business

We’ve just launched a new security assessment tool to help you get a clearer picture of whether your IT is secure enough. It’s free and takes only about 15 minutes to complete.

Fraud and online crime are costing small businesses an average of £768 per year, according to a recent survey conducted by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). Of those interviewed, 54% of businesses claim to have been a victim of crime in the last 12 months. Some 37% have experienced problems with phishing emails, 15% have fallen victim to cardless fraud and another 15% to problems caused by viruses and hackers, the study suggests.

The new assessment tool:

- Gives you an accurate and comprehensive view of your security
- Prioritises a list of issues, with guidance to minimise these risks
- Delivers Defence-in-Depth index reports, based on best practice
- Provides ongoing reporting and guidance, so you can continue to improve

Source: Microsoft Small Business

New on the website is a collection of 60-second business insider podcasts. These are designed to provide quick and easy resource for brushing up your skills in just a couple of minutes (OK, not quite 60 seconds, but not much longer!) so you get more out of your software. They’re well worth a look.

Here’s a selection of what’s on offer:

• How to create a business card


• Joining a Live Meeting


• Sharing files with Office Groove


• Using the colour category in Outlook


• Organising client information with bUsiness Contact Manager


• Using templates in Office


• Using macros in Excel


• Using conditional formatting in Excel


• Improving your computer’s performance


• Protecting your computer with back-up and disaster recovery

Source: Microsoft Small Business

Guest blog from Emma Jones, Founder of Enterprise Nation and author of ‘Spare Room Start Up - how to start a business from home’.  

The UK’s first ever Home Enterprise Day is scheduled for Friday 20^th November and home business website, Enterprise Nation, has fired the starting gun on a race to follow every home business owner on Twitter, by this date. Here we look at why home-based businesses should be using this powerful tool.

What is it?

If you’re unsure as to what Twitter is and does, essentially it’s a micro-blogging tool. It asks ‘What are you doing?’ and it’s up to you to reply in less than 140 characters. Someone has referred to it as ‘the SMS of the internet’ which just about sums it up.  And here are four good reasons to sign up.  

1. It’s big and it’s growing - an article dated July 2007 refers to Twitter having ‘at least 340 000 users with a public account’ - in November 2008 Forrester Research estimated this had risen to 4-5 million users. Wow. In March 2009, mobile phone company O2 came out with the headline ‘Business Tweeting at record levels!’ - the release estimated over 700,000 small businesses using Twitter, sending nearly three million tweets a day. The release went on to say:

“Twitter has been providing UK small businesses with a range of benefits, including cost cutting, marketing and recruiting new staff. This has meant nearly a third of the small businesses we spoke to have saved up to £1,000, while one in ten saved up to £5,000. Meanwhile over a quarter found that staying in touch with other small businesses helped boost their confidence.”  

Which brings us nicely on to the business benefits.

2. It’s good for business - Twitter is one of the most effective tools we’ve ever seen for promoting yourself as an expert in your field. Post links to interesting articles, share facts and offer hot tips and you will be effortlessly showing you know your stuff. This will attract existing and potential customers and make them feel more inclined to buy from you. Find partners, customers and suppliers using a tool that takes only minutes each day to maintain.  

3. It’s good for you - step in to the virtual corridor of Twitter and meet new friends. Homeworkers can miss the social interaction of an office. Twitter offers that environment, without you having to get dressed up and travel to it. And, of course, you can turn it off whenever you want!

4. It’s free - which other piece of kit do you know that introduces you to new business, new opportunities and new friends - for free.

If you’re not yet on Twitter, sign up today at http://www.twitter.com/ and if you already are, please help us in our race by following us on the link below. Reply, retweet and please tell all your homeworking friends!

www.twitter.com/e_nation

and the Microsoft Small Business Twitter page is at: http://twitter.com/MicrosoftSB

Home Enterprise Day will take place on Friday 20th November and is part of Global Entrepreneurship Week http://www.gew.org.uk/  

Related posts: SMEs use Twitter to save costs

Source: Microsoft Small Business

Since this Microsoft Small Business blog is featured in the 100 awesome business blogs we had to mention it!  (At no 13 btw, though I don’t believe they’re ranked, just listed.)  

At a glance they seem to be primarly US-oriented, but still worth a look if you want some Friday light-relief.

Source: Microsoft Small Business

The much-improved small business Wi-Fi Locator is now live on the Small Business site. Being able to work on the move wherever, whenever not only helps you to maintain business operations remotely, but also offers you the chance to remain online when you might be travelling for business meetings or simply working outside taking advantage of the sunshine. Wi-fi hotspots these days can be found in numerous locations from bars and restaurants right through to hotels and airports.  Have a look at the new functionality:

• Zoom in/out map with ‘hover-over’ info on number of wi-fi spots in each location


• Search by postcode, address, town etc


• An operator filter


• Great VE options of 3D (beta) and a Bird’s Eye view as well as traditional aerial and 2D view.


• Simple, clear icons show location type (restaurant, library, airport).

Source: Microsoft Small Business

This is a great blog post on the Microsoft adCenter site and well worth a read. Whether or not you’ve started an online advertising campaign or are still thinking about it, it provides some great tips on how to make sure you’re spending your money wisely.  Written by major PPC/Contextual advertising expert, Jen Slegg, here’s a taste of what you’ll find.

“In a perfect world, advertisers would continually be optimising their pay-per-click campaigns by tweaking their ad copy, removing under-performing keywords and add new keywords to the mix.

However, not many of us live in that perfect world and we tend to turn on an ad campaign then ignore it until we notice that conversions have dropped or the credit card charge reminds us that we should login and check things out.

And while we all know that we should be optimising our campaigns, how frequently should we be checking and tweaking things? Once a day? Once a week? Once a month? Umm…. cough…. never?

Well, unless your role in the business is strictly doing pay per click, chances are good that with all the other hats that fall on a regular “SEO/SEM” webmaster, that you currently fall in the range of once a month and never… but I will give you a hint, that isn’t really the right answer ……”

Related posts: Beat the recession: affordable advertising made even faster; Try online advertising for free! Get started with £30’s worth of free clicks from Microsoft adCenter

Source: Microsoft Small Business

Guest blog from Emma Jones, Founder of Enterprise Nation and author of ‘Spare Room Start Up - how to start a business from home’.

When walking down the street the other day, I overheard someone say “I’m just killing time” to a friend. It’s an expression I haven’t heard in a while and that’s because many of us are trying to expand hours in the day, rather than loose them. Here are some tips on how you can make the most of your day.

A whole extra day

Homeworkers are fortunate. We earn, on average, one whole extra day each week, by cutting out the daily commute. We’re also more productive. Research reported in the Mail on Sunday in 2008 said the average employee does just four hours of productive work a day. The research claimed the rest of the working day (outside the 4 hours) is spent on:

“Fielding unnecessary phone calls and emails, or wasting time by surfing the Internet and gossiping.”

As home business owners, we don’t have the water cooler chat so we can get more done but here are some tips to get you and time in full flow:

• Tidy your desk as you finish for the day/night so you have a fresh start in the morning


• Write a ‘to do’ list the night before (and try to include time slots eg 7-9am: site content, 9-11am: new client proposal etc - this doesn’t always go to plan but it does put some structure in the day) - having a ‘Things to do’ book helps with this task and it’s a great feeling to tick off the items you’ve achieved


• Do the things that require most concentration first thing in the morning. That way, you’re less likely to be interrupted by calls and emails


• Speaking of which, emails and calls can be a great distraction! When you need clear concentration, switch out of the inbox and, once the project’s done, download and reply to the mail that’s come in. You can also ‘switch off’ the phone by leaving the answer machine on or diverting it to a call-handling service, if you have one.


• Outsource tasks that take up lots of your time but earn little return. This frees up your time to spend on activities that deliver income and happy clients.   


• Make the most of project management tools such as Basecamp. Why does this save you time? Because you can keep clients updated on what’s happening on their projects which means less travel to and from meetings. 

As our technology editor, San Sharma, once wrote: ‘The tools we use enable us to manipulate time. The web, email, instant messaging offer information and communication on our own terms. The news when we want, messages as they come, responses in our own time…’

He’s right. We can manipulate time. Just please don’t kill it!

Source: Microsoft Small Business