M & A Rainmaker

If you combine Staffordshire’s recent commitment to provide ” Superfast Broadband ” with it’s prowess in the use of social media then I think the seeds of achieving the label of ” Silicon Staffordshire ” are there.

What is most important is that at the highest level within Staffordshire County Council there is the belief that this CAN be achieved.

Staffordshire IS putting it’s money where it’s mouth is; walking the walk not just talking the talk - both in broadband and in social media.

Staffordshire Police’s ACTUAL use of social media to communicate with people is a great example:

http://www.staffordshire.police.uk/about_us/social_media/

Twitter ( particularly ), Facebook, YouTube and eBay ( to sell seized stolen goods !! ) are all being used to great effect.

When I visited Staffordshire County Council’s office’s recently I noticed the Cisco phones on the desks of the ( very smart looking ) receptionists.

As I happen to have spent much of my life working with Cisco I immediately realised that here was a Council that put the correct Information Technology Strategy above short term, price driven solutions.

A Google search revealed this article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/government-computing-network/2011/jul/18/councils-share-networks-infrastructure

on ” sharing networks ” - something I believe in passionately. CIO Sander Kristel said:

” Staffordshire county council is making good progress towards integration with health partners within a shared network infrastructure. Chief Information Officer Sander Kristel expects its emerging Public Service Network ( PSN ) to save the council £10m.

He believes true shared services may only be achieved through sharing a network infrastructure. “To provide better services to the public it is necessary for us to work much more closely with others,” he says. “To do that it is best to share network infrastructure where it is much easier to share data securely.”

Kristel describes the move to a shared network infrastructure as partly opportunistic. “Our current network contracts were up for renewal, our telephony systems needed replacing and some of the other partners in Staffordshire had similar timelines,” he says.

“We have taken a very pragmatic approach, as the requirements of the PSN were not available when we went ahead with it. However, our supplier Kcom is part of the national PSN group.” The contract is valued at £23m.

Working across multiple public sector agencies, the network has to comply with multiple standards including those for N3 and GCSx, but Kristel is confident that the PSN will be closely aligned to those standards.

Staffordshire is bundling the shared network core into BT exchanges at the moment. “Traditionally local authorities have put comms hubs into their own building, but for partners to trust the PSN we found it necessary to put it in BT exchanges.” At the network edge it is rolling out fibre and also quite a lot of copper, in a pragmatic attempt to create a flexible infrastructure.

The council is also putting in Cisco telephony and contact centre technology, which it plans to share. “The idea is the customer should not really need to understand who does what and where,” Kristel says.

He already has an agreement with South Staffordshire Health that it will join the network, and says: “I understand from the Cabinet Office that we will be one of the first in England who will share with health partners We’re also having conversations with Staffordshire Police, Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service.”

He describes the process of setting up the shared network infrastructure as less complex than first expected: “We share the costs equally and the county council charges a very minimal administration fee to manage the contract.”

I have not met Sander but there are a number of key views expressed in the above article and in this one

http://www.cio.co.uk/article/3339374/cio-profile-sander-kristels-clear-vision-for-staffordshire-council/

that let me know that Staffordshire is on the right course. Just a few quotes from the above article:

” Integration is a term Kristel uses a great deal and it clearly describes the vision he and the authority have of how to ensure residents get the quality of service they deserve in return for being taxpayers.”

” Staffordshire is almost a pioneer of the public sector network model now being demanded by the Cabinet Office in Whitehall. “

“We have taken a pragmatic approach, opting for copper not fibre optic. Copper is easier to deploy at smaller sites and we will rationalise our estate again soon; why dig a trench into these buildings?” he asks.

“The network is step one. We can provide services almost like a cloud so that organisations can run their email or document management over it,” he says.

” The network is just one of a range of cost-saving projects Kristel has led at Staffordshire.

A move to Citrix thin client desktop applications on HP hardware gives the authority’s new HQ a desk-to-staff ratio of 7:10, making the building seem like a bank rather than a council office.

Voice over IP has been added and videoconferencing is on the way.

The authority is proud of its new HQ and screens at reception tell you it is saving the council £250,000 a year. Virtualisation has reduced Staffordshire’s datacentre fleet to two and each datacentre has just three racks in it.

Using the new PSN disaster recovery facilities via a reciprocal deal with a neighbouring authority is also being considered.”

” Influence of IT
While Kristel does not have a direct line to the CEO — “I report to the CFO. I used to report to the previous chief executive, but this very much depends on your chief executive” — he is on the wider leadership team and says IT is very much part of the big picture in Staffordshire.

“You have a lot more influence and early warning of what is going to change in the authority,” he says.

Early warning is the most important thing as the European procurement process can take up to a year. ”

I have italicised some of the key words and phrases that I believe should be taken forward into the next phase of broadband and social media development.

Becoming a ” Silicon Valley ” in the U.K. is not a simple process. This video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

titled ” The Secret History of Silicon Valley ” explains some of the historical factors ( beginning in World War 2 ) that led to Silicon Valley becoming the start-up powerhouse that it is today.

That is not to say that it cannot be done though. It WILL require a number of challenging pieces of a jigsaw to be put in place.

At the end of this video interview with Marc Andreesson ( founder of Netscape and now a Silicon Valley VC ) he explains what he thinks needs to be put in place to recreate another Silicon Valley:

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/05/andreessen-no-tech-bubble/

There are other articles that I have read that further help to understand the components required.

Silicon Crossroads is the High Tech. business area established between Lichfield, Tamworth, Sutton Coldfield and Walsall in Staffordshire, England, U.K. The crossroads referred to is the ancient crossroads of Watling Street ( the A5 ) and Rykneld Street ( the A38 ) which cross one another just below Lichfield.

Notably Tamworth is dominated by Tamworth Castle and Lichfield by Lichfield Cathedral and these are ancient seats of power in Middle England.

The recent discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard may well add to the evidence for the Lichfield and Tamworth area being an area of influence and innovation and Silicon Crossroads and the Silicon Crossroads VCT continue this tradition.

The Silicon Crossroads VCT is a High Tech. Investment fund with a particular focus on areas like Social Media, Inbound Marketing and Cloud Computing.

We have established strong connections with entrepreneurs, business angels and venture capital funds in some of the main innovation areas in the U.S. and Canada like Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, Vancouver, Austin, Toronto and other emerging High Tech Innovation areas like Baltimore.

Aside from Early Stage funding the VCT provides support for start up and early stage companies from the U.S. and the U.K. Included in our support services is ” Outsourced Business Development ” to assist companies to identify target customers and sectors  and to establish contact with them using state of the art Marketing techniques like Inbound Marketing, the creation of Internet Marketing Ecosystems and therefore the use of Social Media and Social Business Media.

It became obvious a few years ago that the rise of companies like Salesforce ( SaaS CRM ) , Google ( Search and Social Media ), Facebook ( Social Media ) and Twitter ( Social Media )  would give rise to other companies like HubSpot ( Inbound Marketing ) , Hootsuite ( Monitoring multiple social media channels )  and Twylah ( Twitter brand pages ).

It was less obvious that there would be such huge angel and venture capital investment in the U.S. but there has been and it is only increasing.

There has also been a revolution ( from necessity ) in funding methods for start ups in the U.S. with companies like KickStarter and the concentration of Angels and so called Super Angels onto lists like AngelList.

In addition companies like SecondMarket have created liquidity in markets like pre-IPO shares and debt.

You can get more information on some of these companies via this blog and my Twylah page   http://www.twylah.com/cwindley.

This is a holding page for more information on Silicon Crossroads and the Silicon Crossroads VCT and websites, blogs and Twylah pages will be developed for these over time.

My contact information is on this blog on the Contact page.

For a change I am not going to write this blog with a view to it getting found ( recently I was talking to someone about the fact that - for those in the know - most content is ” written to rank ” - in search engines. ) I have loads of content on here that is written to achieve a ranking objective.

I also saw recently some debate about the fact that a website should be built to be found ( for the products and services that you provide ) with some people saying that a website was for ” validation ” rather than being found via search engines and converting visitors into prospects and later, customers. Frankly I think that is ” tosh ” and anyone who builds a website and does not want it to be found is crazy !!

There are still loads of people who think that the only thing a website needs to be found for is the company name - LOL !! ( If someone knows your company name then one of your other marketing methods has already worked ).

The fact is that it is not even about building a website any more it is about building an effective Internet Marketing Ecosystem ( as I call it ).

If we consider what one of the leaders of ” Inbound Marketing ” ( HubSpot ) has done then it has moved from providing software that graded the effectiveness of a website ( Website Grader ) to software that grades the effectiveness of the Internet Marketing Ecosystem ( Marketing Grader ).

An effective Internet Marketing Ecosystem will comprise of the following components:

A ” website “.

A blog.

A number of Social media accounts ( Linkedin, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google + etc etc )

These are the basic requirements. Knowledge and membership of other sites is also required/advised like:

Internet Press Release sites.

Digg.com

Various ” Bookmarking” sites.

Twylah.com

The website and blogsite ( which may be one and the same ) should be based on a ” powerful platform “. Wordpress would be a typical example of this. ( Wordpress ranks 18 on Alexa so you are building your content on one of the most powerful platforms in the world ). Platforms like HubSpot’s are also becoming important ( for a variety of reasons including being ” powerful ” ).

If you build your website on a “powerful platform ” and then get the on page SEO right ( Titles, tags etc  ), populate it with relevant ( keyword and phrase aware ) content and then keep blogging on a regular basis you will get noticed by the search engines ( spidered ) and you will start to collect links ( from other websites ) to your website.

( In doing the foregoing you will have fulfilled most of the conventional requirements - On page SEO, Relevant changing content and a start on backlinks ).

If you build networks on e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google + and YouTube then in addition to the engagement that you can achieve with fellow members you will be able to post items with links back to your web and blog sites. Whilst the value of backlinks from Social Networks is debated ( amongst SEO types ) there is a value and in any event prospective customers are being driven ( led? ) back to your web/blogsites.

Of course there is a way to build networks ( on social networks ) which will be covered elsewhere, but the fact is that they are a necessary part of the ” ecosystem “.

In order to ” convert ” all the visitors to our website and blogsite into prospects we will need ” email sign up box’s ” and various ” Call to Actions ” e.g. sign up here and you can download a white paper. You may even have a ” Buy one now ” button where appropriate.

Finally you will want to know what aspects of the ” ecosystem ” are working best in terms of ” Being Found and Converting visitors to leads “. Are they coming from you being found in search engines ( for your keywords and phrases )?; are people just typing in your company name or url?; are your email marketing campaigns working best?; is Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or Google + the best at sending you new visitors.

This requires an analysis system like Google Analytics ( plus other apps ? ) or an ” all-in-one ” system like HubSpot.

Lichfield businesses have been subjected to an incredible outbreak of Wahooliganism. Wahooliganism first emerged in Minneapolis in the U.S. last year and then spread globally via highly connected individuals and internet influencers.

It gained serious Klout along the way but suffered a setback in early February. It is expected to re-emerge over the coming weeks stronger than ever and businesses in Lichfield and indeed globally are advised to prepare.

What is Wahooliganism ??

A short description proffered by Wahooly founder Dana Severson is  ” Accelerating Start-up growth through online influence. “

There’s a good description of Wahooly in TechCrunch here:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/wahooly-launches-its-crowdfunding-experiment-with-first-3-startups-ready-for-social-capital/

Wahooly ( a start-up itself ) is helping it’s first 3 start-up’s ( actually on the website there are 4 now - http://wahooly.com/ ) to gain traction by having ” influential people ” invest time, effort and skills in them and promote them on a global basis.

Does this actually work ???

Well I think it does. Word of Mouth Marketing,Networking and Referrals are established ways of ” getting the word out ” and ” growing the business “.

For those of you who have read Gladwell’s ” The Tipping Point ” you will know that “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.” These people are Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople.

According to Gladwell, economists call this the “80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the ‘work’ will be done by 20 percent of the participants.”

The 20% are defined by Klout ( arguably ) as those who have a Klout score of greater than 45. ( Klout is only one company that is measuring Internet ” influence ).

This is not really rocket science - you get influential people ( in real life and virtual life ) to promote your company, products and services and this helps you grow your business.

Let’s take two examples:

Twylah ( http://www.twylah.com/ )

Twylah is a company that wants to take your Twitter Tweets and ” Tell your story and get you noticed ” by making an awesome looking website out of your Tweets. Twylah is based in San Franciso and is a start-up with co-founders Kelly and Eric Kim. Kelly is the community manager for Twylah and the marketing face of @Twylah.

Twylah has some VERY famous clients already ( see http://www.twylah.com/featured ) which include Lady GaGa, Britney Spears, Bon Jovi and Arnold Shwarzenegger !! This might give you the impression that only famous people need apply ! Here is David Skok of Matrix Partners Twylah page http://www.twylah.com/bostonvc/topics/matrix ( A Boston based VC investor  ) and here’s my Twylah page  http://www.twylah.com/cwindley .

From small beginnings Twylah has spread globally - mainly by using Twitter. Kelly has some 13,000 or so followers on Twitter. By picking certain people ( famous, influential, interesting ) Kelly has spread the word on Twylah and now Twylah users are spreading the word further.

Coco Meli Bakery ( http://www.cocomelibakery.co.uk/ )

More locally, Meli Nicolaou, of Coco Meli Bakery is using various means to promote her Artisan Bakery business and newly launched refreshments van at Trent Valley Railway Station.

Meli (  @CocoMeliBakery on Twitter )

has a relatively small ( well at least to Kelly !! ) Twitter follower base ( 500 odd ) but she has used this to help spread the word about her business. She now has a Twylah page http://www.twylah.com/CocoMeliBakery .

Again, physically and online she is spreading the word and others are spreading the word for her - some of them are influential people.

The involvement of influential people is having an actual positive effect on the growth of the business. What is the value of a new Twylah customer or a new Coco Meli Bakery customer ?? I don’t know but Eric Kim’s background is in the monetisation of Internet platforms and to him ( and the industry he has worked in for the last 10 years or so ) each follower, retweeter, circler, favouriter, liker and email address has a dollar or pound ( or part of ) value !!

Hootsuite is one of a number of applications that now exist for people to monitor relevant activity on a number of social media networks simultaneously like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google +. Competitors to Hootsuite include TweetDeck, PeopleBrowser and CoTweet. One of the major concerns for investors considering investing in HootSuite was it’s location in Vancouver, Canada.

You may know that Vancouver is  the home of many start-ups lots of which are ” high Tech. ” including HootSuite. HootSuite was ranked in the top 10 at the time of this survey.

Vancouver is a beautiful City located on the West Coast of Canada and a 100 or so miles away from Seattle, U.S. - the home of Microsoft and the original home of Starbucks Coffee . I have been to Vancouver a number of times - mainly to ski in Whistler. I sent my son David there to learn about Internet Marketing and I will also always remember it as the home of ” those otters “. You know the cute ones that float around holding hands and have over 17 Million hits on YouTube !! We tried to get David to visit the otters in Vancouver Aquarium but he never quite made it. He did however fly out to Vancouver and back on his own.

Anyway - back to HootSuite. One of the downsides identified with HootSuite by the venture capitalists, as mentioned earlier, was that it was based in Vancouver.  You can’t really believe that Vancouver is viewed ( by some ) as a backwater but it is. It’s vibrant start-up community is a drop in the ocean when compared with e.g. San Francisco, New York and Boston.

The biggest problem perceived ??? How would they get the talent needed ??

In fact this “disadvantage” turned out to be an advantage ….

“Up there, surrounded by quality dev talent with limited competition, HootSuite has been able to attract A+ people at a fraction of the cost of its competitors. This advantage has only grown as HootSuite now is one of the top tech companies to work for in Canada and can pull from across the entire country. ”

Similarly a ” Silicon Crossroads ” in Lichfield would be perceived as ” nowhere ” by the High Tech. community but it has major advantages in the talent pool, the location, access to transport and many other areas.

2007 article about Vancouver’s High Tech. start-up’s:

http://montrealtechwatch.com/2007/08/07/vancouver-canadas-greatest-start-up-city/

You know that Golf advert - ” sounds just like a Golf ” well the other day I am having a conversation with someone and they are telling me that ” they have something that sounds just like a HubSpot ” . I’m saying to myself - well I don’t want something that sounds just like a HubSpot - I want a HubSpot.

Look - I don’t work for HubSpot, I ain’t getting paid by HubSpot and if you cut my head open you won’t find ” HubSpot ” written inside - it’s just that I can’t stand all this stuff that looks and sounds like HubSpot but isn’t HubSpot.

This web developer sort of guy is saying to me ” Yeah, well I can pull this app. to do analytics and this app. to do this bit and this app. to that bit and .. ” and I’m thinking right, so YOU are going to pull all these apps. together to tell ME what I want to know about my website and my Internet Marketing and so forth.

ok so that’s cool but I can go to HubSpot’s Marketing Grader and get a full analysis of any website at any time.

I can put my website onto the HubSpot platform ( which has an Alexa ranking of 702 in the world - I DO NOT have time to explain the value of platforms to you ) and get information about the performance and effectiveness of my website in a way that I can understand - as a business owner - easily OR I can let you pull together all these apps. and then try to explain to me what they are saying - because I will never be able to understand them myself.

Look - if I want something like a HubSpot I will look you up - in the meantime I will have  HubSpot please.

Well actually this lie about Web Marketing was not heard in Lichfield but received in an email from U.S. Marketing guru, Charlie Cook, whose blogsite and article with a title similar to mine is here . Hopefully Charlie will be o.k. with me borrowing from his email ( initially ) and blog post.

You really want to take the time to follow this link ( here it is again )

http://www.marketingforsuccess.com/blog/web-marketing/the-biggest-lie/

and read it before coming back to my blog post.

The gist of it is this: Business people realise that they have to invest considerable amounts of money, time, skill, knowledge and effort into” bricks and mortar sites ” like for example a new restaurant in a chain of restaurants or a new office location in an expanding company but they think that they can open up the Internet or online part of a company for nothing and in a short space of  time, with no skills or knowledge and little effort.

They then wonder why it has not worked.

Charlie says “ Isabela, a successful restaurant chain owner,  knows that when she opens a new restaurant, it’s a big investment. On average it takes, $494,888 to open a restaurant. Yes almost a half million dollars. Of course, within 18 months the typical restaurant is grossing $1,171,629 a year and making a profit of $91,103 – which isn’t bad at all.

How about Isabela’s online business? How much did she spend to get it up and running? Practically nothing – and no surprise it makes practically nothing. ”

I often say to people ” Treat your website like an online sales team ” . Now guess what - a successful physical sales team takes  all the things to build that I have mentioned earlier money ( and some ! ), time, skill, knowledge, experience and effort. Not to mention the fact that you need tools, processes and systems in place to monitor the performance and effectiveness of your salesforce. Those of you that have built a salesforce
( accountancy, law practice etc etc ) know that getting the right team is an extremely difficult and time consuming process.

Charlie reckoned that Isabela’s Internet business could be making $200,000.00 for her but was actually making virtually nothing. This is like a salesperson carrying a ( profit target ) of 2 restaurants worth. To generate $200K the investment would be huge.

I whizzed Charlie’s email off to one of the Director’s of a company that I work with and he came straight back with:

” I always say to the retailers I speak to that want to be e-tailers that the web store needs to be treated like any other store, and will require time and investment if it’s going to be a success on the same scale. “

So, maybe this will help ?? When you are thinking about starting an online business think about it like opening up a new restaurant, a new store a new branch or building a new salesforce and maybe you will get things into perspective !!

High Tech. Start-up’s are booming in the U.S. with Boston, New York and Silicon Valley all very active and there are many U.S. start-up’s looking at establishing a European office. Could Lichfield a.k.a. Silicon Crossroads in Staffordshire dare to dream that it might host some of these start-up’s ?

Friends of mine established Leap the Pond some years ago in order to assist start-up’s gain a successful foothold from the U.S. to the U.K. and vice versa and also from Asia to the U.K. and America and vice versa.

A while back I wrote this blog

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/09/27/celtic-tiger-awakes-and-starts-tweeting-about-hi-tech/

as I was asked to suggest a suitable European location for a U.S. software company that I knew.

Right at the end you will see mention of an accounting practice called the ” Double Irish and a Dutch Sandwich ” fully described here

http://www.joe.ie/news-politics/current-affairs/irish-move-to-save-twitter-53-per-cent-in-tax-0016130-1

which describes the tax savings achieved by Google and to be achieved by Twitter by having offices in Southern Ireland and Luxembourg.

Like it or not the ” financial parameters ” are going to have a significant influence on where a foreign company bases itself in Europe.

Lichfield can do no better than London in influencing the tax position of the U.K. mainland. The so called ” Silicon Roundabout ” in London will have to put up with U.k. Tax laws although it is interesting to note that Google also has offices in London and is taking more space in Silicon Roundabout:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15088359

Recognised ” High Tech. ” areas in the U.K. include: London, M4 corridor, Cambridge, Oxford and Silicon Glen, Scotland. There has been an effort to make the M42/M5 corridor High Tech. and also Telford hosts a number of High Tech. companies.

When you look at Europe from the U.S. you probably have a different perspective and London, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland and Barcelona in Spain all seem to figure high in Americans minds.

I.D.A. Ireland ( now known as the ” Silicon Republic ” !! ) is very active in the U.S. with ” salespeople ” based in Boston, New York and the West Coast yet it does not necessarily get considered despite having many high tech companies based there.

http://www.idaireland.com/

This video by the C.E.O. of IDA Ireland spells out a lot of the criteria

http://www.idaireland.com/news-media/videos/index.xml?bclid=66038357001&bctid=1148962666001

The Tax Environment

The Business offer ( Incentives to base your H.Q. there )

The Talent Pool

The Track Record

Proximity to other ” synergistic ”  businesses.

Transport links

Despite very tough economics in Ireland, or perhaps because of it, I.D.A. Ireland has got all it’s ducks in a row and does a massively professional job of getting inward investment.

Lichfield has to live with the tax regime, as does London.

The business offer would have to be very good.

The Talent Pool, whilst small is there.

It has little track record and not many existing businesses to be synergistic with. There is however a talent pool skilled in web design and S.E.O.

It has fabulous transport links.

It is a beautiful location, great lifestyle and has an opportunity with the ” Saxon Hoard ” to become much better known around the world.

With a lot of work and commitment Lichfield could become a High Tech base.

N.B. This post in the Guardian about The Lichfield Blog

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/nov/22/hyperlocal-media-blogging

shows the depth of the social media knowledge in the area.

Information about Tech City, London : http://www.ukti.gov.uk/investintheuk/sectoropportunities/ict/item/124866.html

Lichfield in Staffordshire has a very Internet aware local government ( e.g. Lichfield District Council uses Twitter for Planning Applications ) and local business population. I thought it would be interesting to use HubSpot’s Marketing Grader software to grade the Internet Marketing Performance of a random selection of Lichfield based businesses.

I chose my random selection not so randomly, mainly from HubSpot’s Twitter Grader for Lichfield on the basis that if people were on Twitter then they were likely to be pretty Internet savvy and social media aware. Hence my selection was ( in order of best performing ) Lichfield Live  , Lichfield District Council , Executives on the Web ( our ” web ” company ) , InterVallum ( Paul Hooper-Keeley has the most Twitter followers in the area ) Hellmann ( Logistics ) and finally Framework Gallery ( who I spoke about in an earlier blog and who performed well in a local search on ” oil paintings “.

http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/staritems

I wanted to get a bit of a ” spread ” of results i.e. from high end results like Lichfield Live ( who you would sort of expect to have a comprehensive Internet presence ) , through Lichfield D.C. ( who probably have a team of website specialists and as mentioned before are very pro. social media and the Internet ) to Executives on the Web ( who again, as a web based business, you would expect to be pretty high ranking )  to Hellmann’s ( who arguably don’t need a particularly strong web presence ? ) to Framework Gallery who, as I say performed well in some earlier searches.

I don’t propose to go into any detail on each of the reports ( they are all listed below if you want to take a look at them ) but you probably need to understand that these grades are relative to thousands of other websites around the world i.e. 78/100 means that the Lichfield Live website in conjunction with it’s associated blog and social media memberships  has a better internet marketing performance than 78% of the web presences reviewed by HubSpot. That’s pretty good !!

You also need to understand that HubSpot takes a pretty ” salesy ” view of life. Terms like Top of the Funnel and Middle of the Funnel may not mean much to some business people but they will be familiar to most salespeople. HubSpot’s mantra is ” Get Found ( on the Internet ), Convert ( Visitors to leads ) and Analyse ( how you did it and how you could do it better ).

To achieve this HubSpot recommends the establishment of what I call an ” Internet Ecosystem ” i.e. a combination of a website, a blogsite and various social media memberships and other sites that essentially drive visitors back to your website. ”

Marketing Grader Reports

http://marketing.grader.com/site/lichfieldlive.co.uk  - 78/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.lichfielddc.gov.uk - 68/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.executivesontheweb.com - 60/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.hellmann.net - 39/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.intervallum.co.uk  - 31/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.framework-gallery.co.uk - 12/100

Start up Wahooly starts tomorrow ( Tuesday 31st January ) having used Klout to select it’s members. I realise that this is is all about as clear as mud at the moment !

Let’s start with Klout which is a company ( one of a few that are doing this ) that essentially grades your Internet influence. Here is Klout about Klout:

http://klout.com/#/understand

” Klout was founded in 2008 to help you measure and leverage your influence. We believe influence is the ability to drive action. For example, Oprah’s opinion on literature has inspired millions to read titles from her book club. But you don’t have to be Oprah to have influence. You influence your friend when she listens to a song you recommend on Facebook. You influence your coworker when he checks out an article you posted on LinkedIn and shares it with someone else. Social actions like these are a reflection of influence. ”

Klout uses a ” secret algorithm ” to measure people and brand influence.

A few month’s ago this algorithm was ” modified ” and a lot of people’s ” Klout score ” changed ( many for the worse ) generating considerable reaction from Klout ” members “.

A lot of people say ” Who are Klout and what right do they have to rank my influence ? ” I have my own issues with Klout including the fact that they have a lot of technical bugs that impact people’s scores.

Anyway - let’s get on to Wahooly. Wahooly is a start-up that aims to help start-ups by recruiting ” influential ” people to promote start-ups that they wish to support. In return the influencers get equity ( shares ) in the start-up. So, this is like hiring an Internet Marketing Expert ( Social Media Marketer ) and PR person and paying them in equity rather than hard cash.

Will it work ?? We shall see.

To be a member of Wahooly you needed to have a Klout score of 45 or above ( mine was at the time of selection but has fallen slightly since. I have been as high as 67 in the past ).

More on Wahooly’s use of Klout here:

http://www.launch.is/blog/wahooly-uses-klout-to-add-400-influencers-daily-who-earn-equ.html

I am therefore a founder member of Wahooly and a Wahooligan ( as they call it ).

Given that it has been very hard to raise start-up capital in the last few years there have been many new initiatives to help start-ups get going. Equity for influence is just the latest of them. There have, for example , been a whole host of crowd financing ( investing small amounts of money for small amounts of equity ) initiatives.

Obviously Wahooly has a presence on the main social media platforms:

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/wahooly?ref=ts&sk=wall

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Wahooligans/

Twitter

https://twitter.com/#!/TeamWahooly

Google +

https://plus.google.com/u/0/105465481469156419624/posts

Linkedin

etc

It is going to be an interesting experiment !!