What have we learnt?  For me, the interview with @edjeffs was the most telling. The @ShippamsPaste Twitter account was very successful, gaining a few thousand followers in a short amount of time, but it wasn’t the result of a concentrated business plan – it was an experiment, something ostensibly done for fun.

This great article on viral marketing analyses the science behind it, and the vital factors – the most important of which is probably emotional drivers. If the consumer doesn’t engage with the content, then they’re not going to bother to share it – they need to be invested in it. And this needs to happen fast, which is why memes so often go viral, as they’re very visual and instantly engaging. But at the end of the day, a viral can just take everyone by surprise.

So what’s the best way to organise a strategic B2B campaign? Remember first and foremost that you’re not just competing against others in the industry – you’re competing against all other content too. Yup. ALL content, which means the odds are stacked against B2B from the beginning, really. It’s a tough truth, but one that’s vitally important to understand. Even the best-planned B2B viral campaign is likely to have less of an impact than one based purely on fun, because guess what? A lot of viral content goes viral just because there’s a country full of bored teenagers messing around on Reddit or 4chan, and they’re not likely to be engaged with your corporate brand.

But while it may seem that this month has made me completely cynical, don’t think it’s all doom and gloom. We’ve been working on a new project lately, and lessons learned from viral marketing have come in very useful indeed. Thanks to paying close attention to engaging our audience, ensuring snappy viral-style content, and analysing exactly when and how the peaks in our stats come about, we’re figuring out what works – and we’ve built a pretty impressive online community already, one that engages with and shares the content we produce. It may not be on a 10-million view Gangnam-Style par, but better steady growth and encouraging loyalty in your audience than a flash-in-the-pan, right?

So to conclude; don’t pin all your hopes on viral marketing, but don’t write it off totally either. And don’t give up if you the positive results aren’t immediate. Oh, and last but not least, try to be cool.

 

When I read a post on the B2B Social Media Guide a few weeks ago saying that viral marketing was a force not to be sneezed at, I said I thought it was, actually. I did this largely so that I could link to this cute baby panda doing a baby panda sneeze, and because I’m an irritating contrarian. Think of my shock, then, when @sophmackintosh, guest editor of the blog, approached me to call my bluff. Not one to back down, I agreed to play devil’s advocate, so here goes.

Now, I’m not entirely sure what it is for something to be a thing not to be sneezed at. Or what it means if it’s not to be sniffed at, for that matter. Does viral marketing have a weak immune system? Is it smelly? Should I make sure no air passes into or out of my nose when I’m in a lift with it? Let’s set aside the origin of these schnozz-related idioms for now, while I respond with a few basic objections to those dishing out guidance on the direction of my nasal ventilation.

Exposing yourself is harder than you might think

The number one sell for viral is mass exposure and – all being well – the great number of conversions that follow, whether they’re new business leads, direct sales, downloads, email subscription or whatever. You can’t argue with the fact that successful viral campaigns have the potential to smash targets in brand awareness and sales. Take the rejuvenated Old Spice brand, and this campaign that launched a Belgian TV channel with a large-scale, dramatic prank triggered by a big red button on a public square.

However, your video (or meme, hashtag, petition, etc.) is about as likely to go viral as I am of being named FHM’s No. 1 Sexiest Woman 2014. Successful campaigns are a drop in the marketing ocean; they’re the (expensive and time-consuming) exceptions that prove the rule. Luckily, there are some sense-talkers out there who speak soberly about the ludicrous idea that marketers can guarantee delivery on the misguided “make us go viral” brief. Sure, having a viral hit makes you feel warm inside, but in reality the vast majority of you won’t get a sniff at it. Most of the promises of agencies, and the hopes of businesses waiting for a marketing miracle, are doomed to end in disappointment. Great marketing? Sure. Viral? Probably not. The truth is that it’s a numbers game, and I don’t fancy the odds.

Viral stuff makes your customers sad and angry

Our engagement with viral content is a funny business. Unless you’re online 24/7, you’re liable to miss the next hot thing breaking. Consider the scene: your peers have all seen the latest viral sensation, but you haven’t yet. You don’t know it, but you’re behind the digital curve in a no-man’s-land of ignorance.

Finger-on-the-pulse guy: “Hey, have you seen that drunk kitten driving a dodgem?”

You, cultural leper: “Ehm, no”.

Finger-on-the-pulse guy: He’s not talking to you any more.

Then you do see whatever it is that’s trending. Sure, it may make you happy or want to buy something, or, at least, make you go “Hah!” when we see it for the first time. But when the offending product, meme, story or video starts to overrun your social network feeds – not to mention your friends’ and colleagues’ chat – it starts to grate, pissing off the people it’s supposed to connect with.

Viral consumes itself

And therein lies the rub: true virality can be marketing suicide. When things go really viral, the effect is often the opposite of the one intended. People get sick of the campaign, which is soon seen as a parody of itself. Gangnam Style was passé long before Madonna did that bloody dance on stage with Psy, her weird frog’s leg arms jiggling everywhere. Go Compare recognised how much they annoyed the public and pivoted their campaign in response, but their “kill the annoying opera guy” ads are just as cringe-inducingly tedious as the original ones. Twitter had to change its algorithms so that Justin Beiber and his army of Beleibers would stop monopolising the trending board. Thus, the greatest viral sensations are also the most compelling arguments against viral marketing, and proof that when a campaign goes viral, it’s often terminal.

HashtagToSumUp

I know what you’ll say: “But these campaigns are really winners, because you’re talking about them, and, even if they hack people off, they boost sales!” To which I answer, with a sad sigh, “You’re probably right.” But the point is: I’m not the happy CFO of Old Spice, or a drumming gorilla enthusiast (well, maybe a little), or even a butt-naked, batshit-crazy viral documentary filmmaker. I’m just a consumer of online content as well as digital marketing news and knowledge. If brands and businesses were to start questioning the promises made by the evangelists of viral marketing, they might save themselves some money – and maybe my online (and offline) experience would be more pleasant. Plus, incidentally – and perhaps most importantly – the word “hashtag” would be much less widely used. This obsession (is it a symbol, a word, a prefix, what?) has crept into the online (and offline) vocabulary of a generation, and can largely be blamed to the concept of viral, and our misconception that it’s important what we have to say should be heard far and wide. #Shareme? #Spareme.

Along with accounts such as Betfair Poker (which is ostensibly a real account, though it hardly ever tweets about poker), ShippamsPaste coincided with the mind-blowing realisation that people like it when Twitter accounts are funny. The shock! While a B2C example of a viral Twitter account, there are lessons to be learned for B2B campaigns too – just because you’re not selling a product directly doesn’t mean that you can’t be amusing, or at least try. There are enough B2B Twitter accounts out there with a constant stream of the driest news possible, so taking a different approach will at least make you stand out. And in the best case scenario it can earn you a cult following. Any publicity is good publicity, right?

It was revealed eventually to be a joke, and ‘Ben’ turned out to be one Ed Jefferson. We’ve talked to him about his experience of being ‘Ben’, and how the account got so much attention, to see what – if anything – can be applied to B2B campaigns.

What made you decide to make a fake corporate account in the first place?

Boredom, in a word.

Why Shippam’s Paste?

It needed to be something that people had heard of, and it didn’t seem like the sort of company that would know much about the internet. They’re also based in the city I grew up in, so that was handy for providing a bit of local colour. And it turns out people are quite nostalgic about sandwiches.

Did you expect it to take off like it did?

In retrospect I’m not sure it did take off, really. It had about 9,000 followers when it got shut down, whereas Justin Bieber has 38 million. It’s nice that some people liked it, though.

Did you plan out the campaign at all, or just wing it?

I pretty much just made it up as I went along, but I attempted to keep all the details about the character consistent to give it some kind of authenticity.

Was it all word of mouth, or did you work to promote it at all?

Nothing beyond what’s visible on the account. It got retweeted by the Guardian Music account and Caitlin Moran, and sort of spiralled from there. Presumably that’s why companies pay celebrities to tweet that they’re enjoying a delicious Twix.

A while after the Shippam’s stuff, I tried an experiment where I’d leave little cards with something like ‘Any complaints? Call this number.’ in various public places – the number was for a voicemail service. I was going to tweet the complaints or recordings or something. No-one ever rang it, so I guess everything’s fine.

Did you have any previous social media knowledge?

Not really – I mean, I was on Twitter, but that was pretty much it. I’d seen stuff like Betfair Poker and that ‘world’ seemed like an interesting area to play around in.

When I first got on Twitter in 2008 or whenever I made an account that automatically retweeted every mention of the word sausages. Then I did the same thing for the phrase ‘your mum’. People got quite upset. I don’t know what my point is.

Has it worked as a career-furthering technique?

No, although someone involved in running comedy Twitter accounts for brands for ‘real’ wanted to pay me to let someone else write tweets as ‘Ben’ (now working for whatever brand it was) for some reason.

What’s your favourite viral marketing example?

Anything where the company’s original intent got derailed, like when rapper Pitbull had to fly to a Walmart in Alaska – a Facebook promotion was hijacked by a campaign to get the rapper sent to the most remote Walmart possible, and people voted in their thousands to send him up to Alaska. But I just talked about Walmart, so I guess they won in the end anyway.

Did you get into trouble?

The impression I got was that the company was a bit confused about why someone would bother to do it and understandably worried that ‘Ben’ might start saying he was putting rat poison in the jars or something. Someone from their marketing agency phoned me up, and that was probably the bit where I was supposed to talk myself into a lucrative contract as a social media rock star or whatever.

What was your favourite/most popular tweet?

The simple and classic #paste.

Find Ed on Twitter at @edjeff and at the resuscitated fake Shippam’s Paste account, @ShippamsPaste

When I first launched ecommerce exercise wear company Zaggora in July 2011 with my wife Dessi and a good friend from university, our marketing strategy consisted largely of two things: we had a promising product – our now signature, technology-enhanced ‘HotPants’ – and a Twitter account. Dessi had spent three years researching and developing HotPants whilst working at JPMorgan, and when they were ready, I was on board to lead the marketing and ecommerce strategy. Dessi had great results with HotPants, but instead of doing loads of market research, we wanted to bring our product straight to real consumers and see what they thought.

We asked 500 women on Twitter to try them for 2 weeks and report back with their results. The feedback we received was even more enthusiastic than we had expected and word of mouth grew like wildfire on Facebook and Twitter. Our small team kept up a continuous two-way conversation that continues to this day and is the key to our marketing success. For our product concept we didn’t emphasise novelty, but focused on effectiveness and transformation. Our thinking was that women would get excited about our product, a fun name, and a much more positive marketing message and community.

This initial Twitter experience shows, in a nutshell, how we formed a strategy for transforming social media into a portal for social commerce that would drive sales and eliminate the need for expensive print advertising. The ROI of expensive traditional print and commercial adverts is a questionable risk for many young SMEs, and it also takes away any chance of the immediacy of click-through sales, which is vital for a business whose sales channels exist solely online. We consistently focused our marketing efforts on social media to gain sales and customer insight, which showed us very clearly the direction we should take next.

Whilst Twitter (where we now have 30,000 followers) provided a great launching point, Facebook has been our major social media driver. We now have more than 387,000 fans and a truly universal demographic: women of all ages and sizes from 126 countries have bought HotPants or one of our other ranges of tops, jackets, leggings and skincare. As we’re an e-retailer, our online conversations and efforts on social media have been primarily responsible for building that community.

The key factor in making our marketing viral has been the philosophy behind it  – one that dictates that we should leverage our fans’ testimonials, comments and likes to help conversions that acquire customers, and then convert those customers to fans. It’s a glorious cycle.

A feed from our Facebook wall, where users are encouraged to post their results from using Zaggora products, has always been embedded on Zaggora.com. Thus, when users come to our website they see the ‘social proof’ that the product is effective based on other users’ testimonials, and in recent survey results, 67 percent of customers confirmed that the reason they bought a Zaggora product was because of this social proof.

The results of some of our early Facebook campaigns can give you some insight into how viral that platform has been for us. In early 2012, two member-get-member, in-tab applications promoting our new products grew our fan base by 40.40% and 65% respectively. They also capped our first seven months, a period that established the correlation between  the number of Facebook fans and our cumulative sales.

By focusing our time, attention and resources on nurturing those social media relationships, we’ve been able to really listen to the consumer and give her what she is asking for. Women have strong opinions on what they want from the clothes they buy, and we have been able to tap into those needs and desires to create a true give and take between business and consumer that makes viral marketing opportunities possible.

Malcolm is Founder and CEO of Zaggora, a revolutionary fitness and lifestyle brand specialising in designing and manufacturing technology-enhanced activewear products. Prior to launching Zaggora, Malcolm graduated from the London School of Economics (LSE) and spent nine years in investment management. Zaggora has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the UK, selling over 550,000 pairs of HotPants in 120 countries through Zaggora.com in less than two years.  Find Malcolm on Linkedin here.

The problem is that virals aren’t made – they’re born. For every successful campaign there’s a flurry of complete flops, ready to be torn apart by the discerning public. And for companies, riding their reputation and savviness on jaunts like this can be a risky game indeed.

However, some have pulled it off. Old Spice and Blendtec are two video examples, selling their product through humorous advertising campaigns. And the film Cloverfield was a huge viral smash thanks to its trailers and the buzz generated by teasers and clips. But how can we translate this kind of success into the B2B sector?

Lessons have been learned from these B2C campaigns and B2B innovators are coming up with ever more exciting solutions about implementing them in a business context. We’ve got a range of  case studies coming up for you, some interviews, and a lot of discussion about the true value of viral – is it ever something that can be relied on in the B2B world, or is it best left to teens parked in front of YouTube?

This April, the B2B Social Media Guide turns its attention to viral marketing. After we read this story about a blind dog and its guide-cat in Holyhead, we concluded that we needed to put a Welshman in charge of this series. So we put Luke Budka on a train to Cirencester, secure in the knowledge that he would end up in Wales, and tasked him with finding the person in charge of viral marketing for Wales. We warned him to be on his guard for craftiness and intelligence and to come back with all ten fingers still attached. He travelled the whole country (before stopping for lunch), but his hard work paid off. Later that week, he returned with none other than Sophie Mackintosh, whose near-endless list of enviable accolades include current holder of TopLine’s prestigious Viral Marketing Magpie title, successful Times Pitcher and multiple Twitter Account Manager. Welcome, @sophmackintosh.

The B2B Guide to Social Media spoke to Alibaba.com’s global leader of online marketing Pamela Hsieh about how the company turned the traditionally slow silly season into a hugely successful social media campaign that resulted in a 60 per cent surge in traffic to the website.

Background

Alibaba.com is the leading international e-commerce site for small businesses, selling everything from raw materials and machinery to hair extensions and USB cables.

The site services 36.7 million registered users from 240 countries and has excelled in breaking down language barriers and helping small businesses branch into foreign markets.

With such a vast customer base to talk to, Hsieh has experimented extensively with social media campaigns in order to find the right mix that breeds true customer engagement.

Alibaba.com had a clear goal for the campaign: to boost customer engagement during the traditionally slow December trading period with a light-hearted social media campaign that highlighted Alibaba.com’s product range.

The results

Alibaba.com experienced a 60 per cent rise in traffic to the website and all of its social media channels were awash with meaningful engagement. Among its impressive results are the following statistics:

67,000 clicks to the website from Facebook

26,000 clicks to the website from Twitter

Over 200,000 visits to the Alibaba.com /FailFixlanding page

More than 1,400,000 views for seven FailFix videos on YouTube

52,000 actions on social media: shares, organic posts, Likes and comments

890 extra page Likes on Facebook

How they did it: #FailFix campaign

Hsieh ran a video competition on Alibaba.com’s Facebook page and YouTube channel that cleverly rode on the coattails of two pop culture trends: hilarious YouTube videos and #fail.

The campaign was simple: competition entrants had to find a #fail video on YouTube and suggest one of Alibaba.com.’s products as a solution, or #FailFix.

In one fell swoop, Alibaba.com was able to make competition entrants laugh, visit multiple pages on the website, and engage with two separate social media channels.

Here’s an example:

Situation: A sleepy baby has nothing to fall asleep against.

Solution: A baby neck cushion.

Promoting the campaign

Everybody wins

Each entrant received a $10 USD voucher for Alibaba.com.

While $10 USD for every single entrant may seem like a gamble – as with anything in life these days, there’s not a lot you can buy for under a tenner before postage and handling. The risk paid off, and just as the web traffic skyrocketed, the quality of the traffic also improved as visitors stayed on the website longer and bought more.

Video team

The fantastic video team compiled competition entries and featured them on the Alibaba.com YouTube channel. The team turned competition entries and raw YouTube videos into high quality branded content. Product placement was a core element of the edit process and videos showcased website functionality as well as an array of Alibaba.com’s products.

The videos were hugely successful, with the most popular achieving over 1.4 million views in total.

Social media mix

According to Hsieh, every social network should be included in the marketing mix, but each network has its associated winning formula. Images and video are content that Alibaba.com customers respond the best to and the overall online strategy is entrenched in this hard-won intelligence – Alibaba.com gives customers lots of what they like.

Here are the components of the campaign we highlighted for aspiring SME marketers:

-       Leave no social media stone left unturned

-       Video is king

-       Advertise the campaign on the destination website.

-       Have a campaign landing page

-       Consider blogger outreach

-       Create a memorable tagline: extraordinary solutions for extraordinary situations

-       Use a Twitter-friendly hashtag: #FailFix

Pamela Hsieh’s advice for B2B SME marketers:

1. Learn about the ebbs and flows that affect your SME markets. Take advantage of the busiest periods to drum up business (for Alibaba.com it’s Halloween) and experiment and use your creativity to support sales during the slow ones.
2. Make something. Create images, videos or tell stories that customers will find engaging.
3. Experiment to find the right social media mix for your market. Each industry is different and so trial-and-error is sometimes the best way to achieving the perfect marketing formula.
4. Work with your sales and product development teams and understand customer browsing behaviour. Know when your customer is active and what they do when they’re online. You can adjust your campaign to make the most of these active periods or to breathe life into business areas that need attention.

Click here to read more from our series on marketing to SMEs.

Earlier this week we told you how SMEs use LinkedIn and how to find relevant groups without having to trawl through LinkedIn’s not-so-great directory.

If you went ahead and used the directory anyway, you probably have a list of top ranking groups earmarked for your marketing campaign because you thought that our suggested method would be too time-consuming. A second look at some of your groups’ newsfeeds however will probably reveal that the ‘very active’ statuses and huge memberships have been earned as a result of prolific recruiter and marketing spam.

So where are the good groups and where can you find them?

We’ve done our research and the best groups have the following attributes:

Statistics that measure up

Scroll down to find the “Group Statistics” button on the right hand side of a group page and examine which users make up the group and how they’re using it. If you’re targeting SME owners in a specific industry, then keep an eye out for stats that reveal the group is not high quality.

Demographics

Seniority: What percentage of members are decision makers and business owners? Beware of a high proportion of entry-level members.

SME Business Professionals UK has 1,095 members, but the majority of the group members fall into the decision maker category. It’s a fraction of the size of some of the largest business-related groups but packs a real punch.

Function and Industry: Is this your audience? Make sure at least half of the members are in the correct industry and at least 25 per cent are in the role you’re targeting. Beware of high scores for members in Sales, Advertising,  and Professional Training and Coaching.

Here’s an example of a group in the US called Small Business Loans – Help for Small Businesses which has the ideal mix of users in a specific industry.

The stats don’t lie

Activity

Jobs and Promotions: If there are more than a handful of jobs and promotions posted on the site every week, tread carefully.

Comments vs. Discussions: If the discussions outstrip the comments by leaps and bounds, then chances are the majority of the posts are promotional, rather than regular call-outs for help and advice. It’s rare to find a group where comments outnumber discussions, so look for one that’s more or less evenly matched. Beware when evaluating larger groups with this method. Small Business Online Community has 23,855 members and recorded over 800 comments last week, but we struggled to find a single quality discussion and comment thread.

The elusive quality thread

The fact that there are lots of genuine LinkedIn users offering their advice to SMEs doesn’t mean the advice is any good. They’re not all diamonds.

For example, a LinkedIn member asking for advice on how to promote his book got the following response: “A good way is to hold a talk about a book and create a buzz.” Groundbreaking stuff.

Here’s our list of groups for marketing to SMEs in the UK (and some really good ones from the US) who have the right mix of useful marketing content and genuine forum activity.

Our picks for LinkedIn SME groups:

Small business network for start-ups and entrepreneurs

Small Business Evolution – Entrepreneurs and SMES

SME Business Professionals

Providing finance and funding to the UK SME Marketplace

British Library Entrepreneur Network

Ingenious Britain

Business Support Network UK

Small Business IT Pros

GO Small Business

Succeed in Small Business, Powered by Staples

Check in with us tomorrow for a post on how to talk to SMEs on LinkedIn, or read more from our series on marketing to SMEs.

With over 100 million users, LinkedIn is the 11^th most visited website in the UK and an obvious target for social media marketing. What makes it just as important as social media top dog Facebook, however, is that it’s the best placed for targeting SMEs.

LinkedIn is the one social network where the 18-24 year old age bracket is underrepresented. In fact, the most common LinkedIn user is over 35 and has a university degree.  While there are plenty of young entrepreneurs making their marks in the business world before they hit 30, the majority of small business owners fit into this older demographic.

We looked into how many LinkedIn users are associated with a company of fewer than 50 employees in the UK and broke them into two groups: SME owners, founders, directors and CXOs, and then employees and line managers. Over 100,000 LinkedIn members in the UK are linked to SMEs and just under a third (approximately 28,000) came under the first category.

Now, we know that 100,000 is just a drop in the ocean of small to medium businesses: In 2012 there were 4.8 million in the UK. That being said a sample size of 100,000 LinkedIn users in the SME category is large enough to make basic assumptions about the sector as a whole and the calculations we’ve made below are therefore approximate.

We then went even deeper and have broken down these 100,000 members by sector to find out exactly which businesses are on LinkedIn and which aren’t.

SMEs on LinkedIn by sector

We made three key observations:

LinkedIn isn’t used by SMEs in primary industries and manufacturing.

Or it’s at least not used as well as in other sectors. What we found is that agriculture and manufacturing, considering the size of their markets and importance to the UK economy, are hugely underrepresented on LinkedIn.

SME owners are out in force on LinkedIn.

Our initial observation that roughly a third of the LinkedIn SME population is made up of heads of businesses, a relatively high percentage, is true across the board when you break it down by sector.

For example, according to the figures we pulled from LinkedIn, marketers have a pool of fewer than 400 direct targets in construction to work with in the UK, but on the other end of the scale those approaching high tech SMEs have nearly 10,000 users who identify themselves as heads of businesses.

If you want to talk to small business owners, use LinkedIn Groups.

LinkedIn recommends that you look for relevant groups in order to identify your target users. Groups are an excellent resource for users to put their questions into a forum, share ideas and discuss issues affecting their businesses.

To find groups with your target audience there’s a group directory that allows you to search for relevant groups, but it’s by no means perfect and doesn’t have accurate filters on multiple keywords or regions.

Rather than just typing in your keywords – “SMEs + UK” for example – and hoping for the best (which, by the way, will yield a group called Small Business in the Ukraine), you need to put on your deerstalker and tweed and do your research. We’ve devised a time-saving way to do an efficient sweep of your target sector that will save you hours of aimless browsing:

1. Find one good, relevant group with at decent percentage of the population for your sector (using our table above as a guide if you’re targeting SMEs).
2. Identify five active conversation threads, preferably covering a topic relevant to your products and services.
3. Find 10-20 participants in those conversations.
4. Look at those users’ newsfeeds and subscribed groups and join them where appropriate.

Doing this helps you to identify which groups the active users in your sector frequently read and contribute to, enabling you to build a base of relevant, well-subscribed forums.

Now that you know how SMEs use LinkedIn and how to find them, check back with us on Thursday for a post on how to evaluate a LinkedIn group (as well as our list for top groups covering UK SMEs) and on Friday for a post on how to talk to SMEs in groups.

Please click here to read more posts from our series on marketing to SMEs.

Marketing to SMEs on Twitter: Our must-follow accounts.

Now that you know how to talk to SMEs on Twitter, here’s a list of our top Twitter accounts relevant to SMEs.

In this list are the official Twitter accounts of entrepreneurs, start-up champions, government bodies and resources that provide useful information for small businesses.

To make it easy for you, we’ve put them altogether in a Marketing to SMEs List on our Twitter account.

Business Link – Online resource to find government information, support and services for SMEs.

HM Revenue and Customs – Official news and as well as tax help, advice and deadline reminders for SMEs.

StartUp Britain – A national campaign by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to celebrate, inspire and accelerate enterprise in the UK.

Umair Haque – Economist and author. Umair regularly blogs for the Harvard Business Review and provides insightful economic analysis relevant to small businesses.

Duncan Bannatyne – Dragon on BBC’s Dragon’s Den.

Alan Sugar – Chairman of Amshold Group and best known for his role in the UK Apprentice.

Mike Butcher – EU Editor of Techcrunch.com.

Tim Harford – Presenter of More for Less on Radio 4, author of Adapt and The Undercover Economist.

Oli Barrett – The man behind StartUp Britain.

Martha Lane Fox – Dot.com pioneer and founder of Lastminute.com.

Michael Action Smith – Entrepreneur and founder of Mind Candy and Moshi Monsters.

Laura Kuenssberg – ITV News business editor.

Nigel Botterill – Entrepreneur.

BIS – The Department for Business Innovation and Skills.

Small Business Hub –  A trusted resource for small business news.

Robert Peston – Business editor for the BBC.

Ingenious Britain – Resource for SMEs of all shapes and sizes.

Mary Portas – Retail expert and self-proclaimed ‘Queen of Shops’.

Huffington Post Small Business – Relevant and interesting analysis of national stories for small businesses.

Guardian Small Business – News, opinion and advice for small businesses.

Have we missed anyone on the list? Let us know by leaving a comment and we’ll be sure to put them on the list next time.

by @Niamhlechou of TopLine Communications.