SBSE

Morning all.  If you have been a follower of this blog over the last year, you will recall my happy posts about the group irasb.  It has been an enormous help over the last year, and also had become a great tool for meeting fellow small business, (and growing business) owners, some of which I now happily call my buddies.

Along side some of these great people I have met, we have developed a group called SBSE.  Or more formally, Small Business Support & Experiments.   SBSE began as an experiments group that aimed to find out how to beat the algorithms that Facebook has in place, - also called an 'EdgeRank'.  You may have seen this written about often if you follow small uk businesses on Facebook, if not, you can find a brief summary here.  The algorithms decide, on your behalf, what posts you might want to see, and which you might not like to see. It chooses which of your friends stories will be the most interesting to you. It looks at the feedback the posts and photos get, and decides whether to show it to you or not.   Many of us with small businesses who use facebook think that if you like a page, you will want to see all the updates, and not be told by a computer programme which ones to see.  So our experimental group is working out the best way for us all to extend our business reach to help our customers keep ontop of our news.

We began using the hashtag #sbse to help find each other on twitter, and we have a facebook group that helps us stay in touch, I am pleased to say that this group of 50 businesses has developed into a place of support for each other, and not just for business, but for general fun and friendly banter.  I imagine it to be a like a virtual office that we all work in, and they are the people I stop for coffee breaks with! Essential if you are lone home worker like me!!!

I have found that the support for my page a tremendous help- - being in touch with businesses that are familiar with my business is a tool which helps create a sense of happy security on my posts and pictures, and we have generally found that it has encouraged other page supporters to comment or like images.  Not to mention that I get to see all the lovely things my friends are making, services they are offering, and even new places to stay when we book our holidays!

(Designed by Ana at http://www.jellybeanhomegifts.co.uk/en/)

After an evening of madness talking about penguins within the SBSE group.... they soon appeared on our twitter accounts .....<(") .......  the hash tag #followthepenguin began to surface, and from this, a new page has been born!!  We even have a penguin banner designed by Jo at Driven by design!  Its called The Penguin Network and it is a networking community that people can use to share work, and generally have fun. Well worth a visit of you have the time. It is still in is infancy, but I imagine great things for this little penguin!!  Its amazing what comes of late night banter!

That's it for me for today, will catch you soon,

Thanks for visiting my blog,

Shelly X