Enterprise Nation Birmingham May and June Highlights

 There is no such thing as a routine Enterprise Nation meet up when Debbie Assinder is the organiser. For May's meet up Debbie arranged a visit to Enterprise Nation member and champion Rosie Ginday's wonderful boutique shop Miss Macaroon in the Great Western Arcade in Birmingham.

As you will note from the photo below what makes Miss Macaroon extra special is that it combines producing outstanding luxurious quality macaroons with its social enterprise values.

Ocia below left, is a star graduate of Miss Macaroon's training scheme helping those overcome difficult experiences and it was a joy to hear her talk about all her new skills, confidence and enjoyment from being part of Miss Macaroon.

On the business side Miss Macaroon is thriving on some big name corporate clients such as Karl Lagerfeld who is a regular customer of some super stylish personalised macaroons.

Can you spot founder Rosie Gindlay in amongst the portraits below?

Miss Macaroon are fantastic at marketing the brand and are always trying new activities for promotion. Francesca Chong headed to the Bullring in June to run an eye-catching boutique pop-up hosted by Appear Here 

Elyssa Horton talked about the collaboration with Blow Ltd the Uber of the beauty world delivering beauty services direct to your home or office.

 After a successful launch night in May the Blow team are back on Friday July 14th offering free makeovers and up-dos with every £5 spend. Add in a glass of prosecco and some exclusive ice creams and it's the perfect way to start your weekend off with some fun. 

Grab a free ticket here: Miss Macaroon x Blow Ltd Summer Beauty Blow Out

Taste the rainbow.

Miss Macaroon is a wonderful example of the talented and inspiring members of Enterprise Nation who benefit from supporting each other's success through sharing skills and meeting up at networking events.

June Meetup

In June Debbie treated us to a trip to the Jewellery Quarter and the very sophisticated surroundings of Assay Studios "A creative place for curious minds".

Assay Studios Manager Ally Mitchell told us that the building founded in 1877 was home to the Assay Office for over 130 years and used to hallmark millions of precious items a year. One can picture the safe below full of glorious silver items.

The great Matthew Boulton played a big part in petitioning parliament to establish Birmingham's first Assay Office in the 1770s.

Nowadays it's where the top talent of Birmingham's tech and creative community hangout.

Glide up the beautiful Victorian staircase and you will find plush offices aplenty.

All that's missing is Sherlock Holmes smoking a pipe.

Assay Studios is home to John Lewis Tech and Deliveroo so there is a tremendous energy and momentum in the building.

The offices range from 300 to 10000sq foot

 We all loved the period details.

You can't find a 'safer' meeting place.

She Means Business in Birmingham

 Debbie had the female entrepreneurs of the West Midlands scrambling to write notes about places on Enterprise Nation's forthcoming trade missions to New York and Singapore potentially being partly sponsored by the local DTI.

Everyone's favourite social media guru David Glenwright gave expert tips and insight on making the most out of Facebook for your business.

Top Facebook Stats

1) In 2017 Facebook has 2bn users.

2) Daily active users open Facebook 14 times a day and spend 4 minutes on average browsing.

3) The optimum number of times a business should post a week is 3-5 times.

4) Videos get 2.5 times more engagement than text posts. Longer videos attract more people.

5) 60% of Facebook users are mobile only.

Top Facebook Tips

1) Choose a good profile photo as it will appear on every single post you make. Your logo or image should be clean, simple and text light.

2) You can now have a video cover photo at the top of your page.

3) Use apps such as Quik to group still photos together into a video with music and a text overlay.

Credit Debbie Assinder

Beating the Facebook Algorithm

1) The algorithm which determines what posts are shown to who and how often is influenced by 1000s of factors. These include who you are close to, your previous actions, location and how your friends are reacting to posts.

2) You are competing for attention so choose only your best content to post and the optimum time to post it.

3) If you post something at 9am and no one likes or comments on the post, Facebook may not show any more posts from you that day.

4) The more likes you get the more people Facebook will show the post to. If your post is a hit Facebook may show your next post to a bigger audience.

5) Shares are the most valuable reaction to a post as the viewer must be highly engaged to want to do this.

6) To get more comments ask questions at the end of your posts.

7) The optimum post length is around 250-300 characters and be sure to use a catchy opening line.

8) Facebook skewer the algorithm to promote new products. At the moment that would be live streaming.

Good examples of Facebook practice are:
1) Innocent Drinks for fun content.
2) Birmingham Hippodrome for promotional activity.
3) KLM for customer service.

Finally

A big thank you from all to Debbie for all the wonderful support she gives to local entrepreneurs.

Words by Paul Clarke

Tweet Pin It Now!

April Highlights: Small Talk, Enterprise Nation Meetup and Social Media Cafe

Badego's Small Talk

Amrit Singh Twitter

Badego are on a real roll of organising fantastic creative events having put on a wonderful talk by Territory Studios at last month's Flatpack Festival. That talk gave an insider's look at working on movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy and The Martian and they followed up last week with an event at 1000 Trades brimming with talented and inspiring creative speakers called Small Talk. Let's start with the amazing Amrit.

Amrit Singh The Periscope King

instagram.com/mrasingh

Creative Designer and artist Amrit is one of the top 10 most popular live streaming artists in the UK. His engaging, warm and interactive live art projects attract thousands of viewers with one video receiving over 100,000 views. He is so popular and his style so entertaining that Periscope invited him over to their San Francisco headquarters. Amrit decided to stream his projects to explore his more artistic side over a year and a half ago. Way before video exploded in importance in social media.

Amrit has learnt a lot and his success continues to grow. It a joy that he has used his large following and influence to help those in need such as refugees and street artists who he videos with all their contact details so people can donate to them.

Amrit's Top Tips

1) Be yourself, your genuine self not your Instagram filtered self. Amrit has had to deal with some challenging people online and has handled them gracefully. He takes risks even if it means it puts him on the spot.
2) Focus on content not number of followers. People can buy fake followers so be more impressed by engagement levels and impressions across media rather than high follower numbers.
3) Give, give, give some more then ask for something back
4) When you teach you learn twice. I love the thought of that!
5) Smile. People respond to smiles and humour, it's infectious.

Cynthia Miller Poetry Queen

Cynthia Miller, Brand Strategist at Orb talked about how she took her love for poetry and feelings of frustration with exclusive and stilted poetry festivals and turned it into a vibrant, diverse, welcoming poetry party for all! The inaugural Verve Poetry Festival was a deserved smash hit. 

VervePoetryFest

Cynthia described how she wanted to attract 'people who hate poetry', experts, newbies, kids and the curious. 

Cynthia opened our eyes to the potential power of poetry through movements such as poetry of resistance and poets such as Maggie Smith whose sad words moved many. Cynthia has just been published in Nine Arches Press's Primers Volume 2. Check it out!

Nine Arches Press

Birmingham Social Media Cafe

Jord Muckley centre. Dave Massey right.

For a minute it looked like Aston University's Social Media Consultant Jord Muckley was going to challenge Brum Hour's David Massey to a follower count over at Conference Aston during the Birmingham Social Media Cafe. It would have been unnecessary as they are both social media geniuses!

Since Jord Muckley (he doesen't Muckley about) has come in to Aston University he has updated and revolutionised their social media content away from serious corporate vibes to engaging storytelling, student Snapchat takeovers and communication by emojis.

The key theme is storytelling and as over 80% of Aston University students do placement years there are lots of exciting stories to be told. Over the summer 6 students will be employed as digital ambassadors with an emphasis on getting out and about and creating great photography.

Watch out for the #yoursforthetaking campaign which will showcase the whole student experience of life as Aston and justify those high tuition fees!

Enterprise Nation Meetup by Debbie Assinder

Enterprise Nation members were treated to a fab meetup in the newly launched Alpha Works ultra modern offices in Alpha Tower. Community Manager Theresa White (above far right) gave us an impressive tour of what for many will be an inspiring place to work and dream.

The Table of Talent!

A high-rise building needs high-flyers and these talented individuals fit the bill. Blenheim London's Dennis Chen announced plans for an exciting new watch whilst Alex is working with branding maestro Naeem Alvi on his modern office furniture leasing company.

Dennis Chen, Alex, Anna Assinder, Naeem Alvi and Rachel Khor

 Anna Assinder made Birmingam Chamber's Future Faces sound an irresistible group to join and mentioned that they are partnering with Independent Birmingham for the forthcoming festival on 13th May. Creative Designer Rachel Khor highlighted some of her wonderful designs for theatre companies across the UK.

Vicci Lewis, Selina Hewlett and Debbie Assinder

 Debbie Assinder can sniff out potential Enterprise Nation members faster than a speeding bullet! Vicci and Selina have just launched virtual business support company Tuki.

It was brilliant to catch up with hot PR company Story Comms's Sophie Drake whose team came up with the amazing Alpha Sunrise photo shoot campaign to promote Alpha Works launch.

Amanda Lowe Twitter

Story Comms invited the regions top photographers such as Tim Cornbill in conjunction with Birmingham's Hidden Spaces for a series of shoots that provided some stunning, refreshingly original shots of  Brum's ever-changing skyline.

Tim Cornbill Twitter

Everyone loved the images. Amazing PR!

Alpha Works Twitter

Finally

Seasonal Market at The Bond Company

I had to pop along to this when I heard that Baked in Brick's mini would be on the scene. The chicken tikka wraps were tasty.

Baked in Brick

 I practically emptied this BAKE Birmingham display.

BAKE Birmingham

With gems such as a Snickers cake, BAKE are everyone's favourite go-to-guys for a treat that's sweet.

BAKE Birmingham

  My daysaver came in handy with all these buses.

I'm now super excited for Independent Bham's Festival in May. 

Words by Paul Clarke

Tweet Pin It Now!