http://www.qclgroup.com/blog a qclGroup blog Thu, 09 Dec 2010 10:43:16 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.3 http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/new-business-start-ups/market-research-small-businesses-part-1 http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/new-business-start-ups/market-research-small-businesses-part-1#comments Thu, 09 Dec 2010 10:33:03 +0000 Mick Johnson http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/?p=407 ‘Market research’ seems to have acquired itself a shoddy reputation in recent years. Mention the word ‘research’ and most people pull a face that says, ‘I got a call from some pushy young upstart who told me he was doing a survey then tried to sell me double glazing/broadband/utilities’ (delete as appropriate – or maybe you’ve had all three…). But the truth is that market research is essential to every business and you can’t afford to ignore it. Soo Darcy, owner of Papyrus Research and author of Competitive Intelligence for Law Firms (Ark Group 2008), gives us a quick rundown of the key activities that every small business owner should be doing.

So tell me, then – what is market research?

It’s probably easier to tell you what market research isn’t: it isn’t selling, it isn’t putting pressure on people, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Going back to the pushy phone call example above, this is known as ‘sugging’ (selling under the guise of research) or ‘frugging’ (fund-raising under the guise of research) and contravenes the guidelines laid down by market research industry bodies. Agencies carrying out this sort of activity are giving the industry a bad name, and put off potential respondents when they are invited to participate in legitimate research. If you are asked to complete a survey, you should never feel pressurised into giving information you don’t want to give; legitimate researchers are trained to take no for an answer, and are not allowed to use your personal details for anything other than the purpose they have explained to you. So let’s abandon that image of market research being the annoying phone call that interrupts your evening meal, and focus on how it can help your business.]]> http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/new-business-start-ups/market-research-small-businesses-part-1/feed 0 http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/small_business_management/google http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/small_business_management/google#comments Wed, 15 Sep 2010 22:43:49 +0000 Mick Johnson http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/?p=388 It's all a question of brand, I suppose. Back in the bad (good?) old days, there was no Google; search engines were pretty thin on the ground and those that were around tended to be a mass of adverts surrounding a little search box. The results of your searching efforts were variable at best - type a slightly different search term a few times and you got totally different and often irrelevant results. Back then, search was simple - SEO was a glimmer in the marketing mans eyes and websites were pretty much judged by their quantity of keywords. Then, in late 1998, a revolution happened.

Google was born.

Two self confessed computer nerds had changed the face of search forever. In a way, it was like the first form of social networking - websites were now judged primarily by the number of sites that link to, or 'vote' for them, a vote for how good they are in their field. Everyone noticed that their search results just seemed to be better with Google ]]> http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/small_business_management/google/feed 7 http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/uncategorized/cloud-computing http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/uncategorized/cloud-computing#comments Tue, 17 Aug 2010 10:35:59 +0000 Mick Johnson http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/?p=304

So, what is this cloud computing stuff anyway....

Well, looking at it from a small business perspective, it could be a way to get most of your day to day software for free and it can also be somewhere to store all of your documents either free or for a small monthly fee. It also means that all of the documents you use day-to-day are available from any pc with an internet connection, so you're not tied to being in the office to work. One of the biggest players to get into the cloud computing world is Google - with Google Docs. This fully web based service lets you make Office compatible documents through your browser that are saved on Google's servers, not on your PC, and this means that you can open and work on them anywhere and ]]> http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/uncategorized/cloud-computing/feed 5 http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/search_engine_optimisation/choosing-keywords http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/search_engine_optimisation/choosing-keywords#comments Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:30:00 +0000 Mick Johnson http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/?p=338 I was going to call this post 'don't start a fight you can't win' - but for the minute we'll stick with choosing keywords, but it's a tough call as to which is more appropriate!! For those of you who are interested in developing the web side of your business, you might already know a bit about SEO and how important choosing keywords that let your site rank in the search engines is - for those that don't, read on to find out probably the single most important thing you'll need to get your site ranking in google.

The basic theory of search.

Right, just to get everyone up to speed, the basics of how search works are this. Your small business website gets launched into the world, the search engines 'read' your website and try to work out what your site is about - it does this by looking for words or phrases that repeat throughout the site, your keywords. Now, when people search for the keywords that feature in your site, the search engines know that's what your site is about and your site appears top in the search engine results, thousands of people click on the link, buy your products and you get rich very quickly. Back in the real world, there are also thousands, or possibly millions of other websites all over the world trying to sell exactly the same thing as you - so the search engines use backlinks from other sites to judge how important your site is in relation to the others in the list]]> http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/search_engine_optimisation/choosing-keywords/feed 7