Later on I attended one of their excellent seminars. ( Very refreshing for Business Owners but a bit damning of normal accountants and lawyers !! )

In this presentation they highlighted the Top 10 reasons/motivations for company purchase ( in order of importance )

Ok, so someone is Googling for more information about something or to find somewhere to buy something.

For example someone wants to find a real ale pub in Holywell area so they type in ” Real Ale pubs Holywell ” .

Back come the responses:

here

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=real+ale+pubs+in+holywell&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

One the first page ( hopefully ) of responses ( in the natural, unpaid for listings ) you see one which says ” Glan Yr Afon Inn real ale pub ”

So, not an advert ( they are in the Sponsored Listings ) or a website or a directory listing or a self-promotion but A TESTIMONIAL or RECOMMENDATION from someone.

This Testimonial or Recommendation is from Jonathan and Ces Loftus on a website called Ecademy.

Question: Is a Testimonial or Recommendation like this more powerful than an ordinary Google listing ?????

It would be an option to have it come from anyone ( who is registered on Ecademy ). So, a business contact could register and provide a T.I.T. for someone. A friend could do it. A family member could do it. Certainly another Ecademy member could do it. It could also be any local businessperson, politician or celebrity. It could be a National or Global Celebrity.

Look here

http://creativelyminded.co.uk/nick_tadd_tits.html

for a series of TITs done about Nick Tadd’s Social Media Training Day by other people.

( So …. they don’t have to be on Ecademy either - they can be on any platform that supports html code !! )

To make this come up on Google you have to know what that person wants to be found for and you have to think about the competitiveness of those words or phrase.

Ecademy is a very powerful website ( to Google ) with lots of great, changing, content, inbound links and keywords and phrases.

Still some words and phrases will be very hard to rank for. ( Obviously not the ones that I have used ).

You can add pictures, graphics and video ( even more examples like this will follow ).

You can get the words done by a copywriting expert. You can enlist the services of an SEO specialist for the ultimate in targetting.

When you do your T.I.T. it can be copied instantly to blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc so this will provide more coverage of your T.I.T.

You can also turn your T.I.T. into a pdf and make posters, leaflets, flyers etc etc

Yes, this is a serious promotional tool in your armoury.

Who benefits ?????

- The potential customer

- The person/company recommended

- The recommender get exposure

- Ecademy gets exposure

a win/win/win/win situation.

What do you think ?????

Please let me know so that I can add in your thoughts and views to my own deliberations.

Get your own TIT !!

http://www.ngt.com/news/?presspager=104&arc=&yr=2009&my=

it was announced that NGT had been acquired by Comcast for an ” undisclosed sum “. ( The announcement was in the small print of the first release aswell )

http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/att/comcast-does-wholesale-voip—buys-ngt.html

There’s a number of interesting aspects of this:

1. Some time ago Cisco started partnering with Hosted Voip providers in the U.S. and the U.K. Some of these partners used front ended Call Manager at the core but Cisco also partnered with ” competitor ” platforms. This seemed a little strange until you realised that a lot of Cisco endpoints were getting shipped by these customers - in NGT’s case ”  150,000+ IP endpoints under management ” and the bundle provided used “  Cisco SPA 500 Series IP Phones “.  ” NGT is ( ??? ) the largest provider of wholesale hosted IP Telephony Communication solutions in the U.S. and NGT enables leading VARs, MSOs, Service Providers and Agents to provide nationwide, managed IP communication services to their customers through its proven channel ready solutions “. So NGT had an indirect model. It had sold to a number of ” Telcos “.

2. This might kick off a bit of a ” land grab ” as Telco’s realise that they have to have Hosted Voip in their portfolio. This applies to the U.S. and the U.K.

3. There are a number of Hosted Voip players in the U.K. - a couple using front ended Call Manager; others using a ” competitor ” core but Cisco endpoints and others using neither.

Watch this space because it is going to get pretty wild !!

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article7043146.ece

shows how much progress Cisco Systems has made during the global downturn.

Although it’s market capitalisation is well down on the boom times it’s market share is up to 85% !!

Many of it’s old competitors are virtually dead now - Nortel, Lucent etc etc

Having just provided the network for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics it is now gearing up to do the same for the 2012 Olympics in the U.K.

This site gives you live tv and information from Hawaii.

Welcome to Miss Molly Cruises, your first port of call for canal boat holidays and hire in Cheshire & Lancashire.

A new way to learn about narrow boats and the canals with a special taster weekend. Please feel free to browse around thier web site to discover a real canal time experience.

Miss Molly Cruises are specially arranged to provide you with a relaxing and worthwhile weekend canal experience. A Taster weekend cruise will be on board Miss Molly, a top quality 60ft long narrow boat. It is a Charter hire with your captain on board and it can be on any of the canals in Cheshire or Lancashire. You can assist with the cruise, learn the ropes or just relax on board and enjoy the scenery. There will usually be locks, bridges and tunnels to negotiate and several canal side pubs to stop at as you choose.

The accommodation and interior design of Miss Molly is first class and she has all of the live on board facilities you could wish for. Miss Molly has full central heating and a cosy fire to toast your toes on. Why not try a special Romantic weekend away for you and your partner so that you can relax together in some of the most beautiful and peaceful surroundings of the English countryside?

For more details please go to http://www.missmollycruises.com/

With the recent news that 2 sets of people got around £56 Million each from the lottery and my visit yesterday to the City of London meeting wealth managers my thoughts turned to who you would choose as your wealth managers and where you would put your money ?

A quick Google of ” where would you put £56 million if you won the lottery ” revealed this from LotteryBuddy.com :

More than 240 winners of at least $1 million responded to surveys (42% of all such winners) by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLGC) in 2003.
89% put money in the bank.
75% shared money with family or friends.
62% bought a new car.
58% paid off debts.
56% took a vacation.
47% donated to charity.
37% paid off mortgage.
34% bought a house.
28% paid for education for self/family.
15% changed their overall lifestyle.
6% bought a boat.

What was the experience like for the winners?
95% sought professional financial advice.
77% reported they had been contacted by the news media. 93% of those contacted said they received fair and courteous treatment.
47% of winners said they were solicited for donations. Among those solicited, 71% said it was “not a problem”.
42% of winners either retired, gave up their job, changed jobs, went to school or opened their own business.

I also quite liked these responses to the Linkedin question ” Why are 75% of all multi-million dollar lottery winners broke within 5 years? ”

http://www.linkedin.com/answers/personal-finance/wealth-management/PFI_WMG/226556-400169

It was good to see that 95% of the people who won the Ontario Lottery sought the advice of professional financial advisors. No doubt one of the first things that the lottery does is to offer financial advice ( although having never won the lottery I don’t know exactly what they do ).

A Google for ” do lottery winners get financial advice? ” revealed this:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/P43409.asp

which said, amongst other things

Find people you can trust.

“The most important financial decision to make initially is who’s going to be accountant, financial adviser and lawyer,” says Hartigan. “And I don’t think they should be the same person.” If you don’t have all of these people in your Rolodex currently — and how many of us do? — “talk to other people who use these kinds of services. Referral is the best way,” Hartigan suggests. If none of your friends or family can recommend a particular professional, Hartigan recommends going to a major accounting firm, a major brokerage and a large law firm. “Ask what they’ll do for you.” Garrison agrees with Hartigan’s advice and adds, “References are mandatory.”

The hardest part of this is the first sentence:

Find people you can trust.

because this will be your greatest challenge.

As I have said I think that the lottery would probably put forward a list of ( hopefully ) proven and trustworthy accountants, lawyers and financial advisers.

But can you imagine this situation ??

One day you don’t really know any lawyers, accountants or financial advisers - or if you do then they deal with relatively minor financial and legal issues - and the next day you have to choose ” trusted ” people that can handle £56 Million !!

Actually ordinary accountants, lawyers and financial advisers are probably not the right people - even if they are from big firms. What you actually need is a Wealth Manager. Now, again, I imagine that with it’s experience of handing out £millions to lottery winners the lottery would have evolved to the position where it had a recommended list of Wealth Managers who really knew how to manage £56 Million rather than accountants, lawyers and financial advisers.

I’ll be developing this theme further over the next few weeks.

If you know anyone that can help here is the list of equipment that they need:

http://haiti-connect.org/what-do-we-need/

Please pass this on to anyone who you think may be able to help or may know anyone that can help.

Thank you.