The Blog of an Entrepreneur

Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

My stolen motorbike and Twitter

Posted in Internet on September 17th 2009 | 2 Comments

It has been a couple of months since my last blog post, and mainly down to time constraints and also the only things I could think of blogging about in my life were commercially sensitive. Bad excuse I know, but then this happened to me…

This is my stolen Yamaha R1 taken a couple of months before it was stolen from outside my office on Moulton Park, Northampton

This is a picture of my stolen Yamaha R1 taken a couple of months before it was stolen from outside my office on Moulton Park, Northampton

Tuesday 15th September was my birthday, and for a treat I thought I’d take my pride and joy to work. My motorbike that I’d worked my nuts off for and bought as a birthday present to myself 5 years ago. When I’d managed to clear the 3 credit cards and bank loans I’d ran up starting Quick Formations. I always enjoy riding my bike, the freedom it gives you away from ringing phones, and being such a symbolic purchase has high sentimental value to me.

This post is partly to let as many people know what happened as possible, in case anyone saw the bike being transported, but also the speed in which the message spread through Twitter absolutely amazed me. That in itself demonstrated to me the power of using Twitter to send out an urgent or immediate message.

At 12:50pm on Tuesday 15th September a tatty looking grey Transit type van reversed up a kerb onto a central decorative area of our car park where my bike was parked. In broad view of 20 offices mind, in front of two witnesses who were in the car park at the time. The van registration was S425 UOF, and appeared to have a roof rack and possibly 3x pipes on its roof.

Two men got out of the van, one wearing black motorcycle leathers and a dark blue or possibly black crash helmet. The other was wearing blue jeans, white trainers, and a white sweater or jumper with blue horizontal stripes. This man had brown hair but quickly put on a blue cap. They both appeared of stocky build and around 5ft 10″ to 6ft tall. They went round ot the back of the van, picked up my bike which isn’t light, and put it in the back of the van. The one in leathers jumped in the back with the bike, the other shut the van doors and drove the van away at speed.

The police were notified within 5 minutes and managed to track the van through surveilance camera’s and ANPR camera’s. The van was found within about 45 minutes.

Where Twitter came in is that I posted the following message on Twitter;

“My m/bike just stolen 10 mins ago, blue R1. Thrown in battered grey transit reg S425 UOF in Moulton Park , Northampton Please RT” – you can view it here.

Within minutes the message had been ReTweeted countless times, the message had been posted on biker forums around the UK, the local paper had picked up on it and posted a story here, other business owners I know around Northampton had started emailing messages to each other spreading the news. Telling everyone to keep an eye out for my bike. Within an hour of my bike being stolen social media had spread the news as far afield as Newcastle and as far south as Cornwall. Just searching on Google already shows how far the message has travelled, and that is what websites Google has crawled already.

One last thing I am hoping is to find my bike before it is destroyed by those who stole it, and sold off for spare parts or smashed up. They wont be able to sell it on the open market easily as every component is tagged and marked with MagicWater, so I dread to think what could happen to my pride and joy. So I am hoping if anyone around the Northampton area saw a blue sports motorbike being delivered by some men matching the above description, please call the police on 03000 111222. This delivery would have happened some time between 1pm and 2pm on Tuesday 15th September. It could have been to a house, a lockup, a warehouse. This location would be within an hours drive from Moulton Park Office Village, Northampton. My bike was parked alongside the tree in the centre raised area you will see on that satellite picture.

I am a big fan of social networking, always have been, but the support from everyone else helping spread the message so quickly after my bike being stolen is heart warming. I keep saying it on Twitter, but again, Thank You.

I hope this blog post goes a step closer to me getting my bike back. I know the insurance money could get me another, but it won’t be “My Bike”.

Social Media – Is it a waste of time?

Posted in Networking on April 24th 2009 | 2 Comments

This morning I attending an event in Milton Keynes where the speaker gave a presentation on using Social Media Advertising in your own business. I went along hoping to learn something I am missing, pick up that little nugget of information that would help me improve my own use of online social media networking.

The event itself was fun to listen to, the chap presenting was @N3W_Media on Twitter and despite his rather dry humour did get the message across, albiet the room was clearly filled with people who had heard of the likes of Facebook or Twitter but not really used them. I also disagreed with some of his comments, such as he ignores the “noise” on the timeline on Twitter. Surely if you ignore the time line and only use robots to send out scheduled tweets you’re ignore everyone else and missing the whole point of social networking! You should interact with everyone else, it’s rude not too.

Back on topic, and the reason for this post. I met a gentleman there who attends a number of networking breakfasts and lunches, and dinners, every week. He spends, we estimated, about 25-30 hours a week networking! Yet he didn’t get the point of online networking so I tried to explain it like this.

At a networking lunch you might meet 20 people, who you will obviously exchange your business card with. This lunch, allowing for travel to and from, will take about 3 hours of your day to meet these 20 people. If you are lucky maybe one or two of these twenty people will have any interest in what you business does.

If you spend 3 hours on a site such as UK Business Forums you could contribute to about 50 threads, network with about 2,000 people, and have had your company information viewed by potentially tens of thousands of people. This is just one example, but it would be better that you use those 3 hours to spread yourself across tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and forums such as UK Business Labs and UK Business Forums. With more and more people moving to online mediums for networking and business social interaction, it is ever more important to spread your networking across both offline and online channels. What is even more brilliant about online networking is that you are target more effectively the groups of people you networking with, by common interest or industry groups. This targetting can significantly increase your prospective conversion rates making those twenty people you may have met at lunch look pretty insignificant.

With efficient use of your time and using smart tools you could streamline your time too, but linking sites such as Facebook and Plaxo to your Twitter updates. For example, Plaxo and Facebook will automatically import your blog updates and Twitter updates. This means you only need to post a Status Update to Twitter and which automatically updates these other two social networks. Likewise, post to your blog and have all your social network accounts automatically import your latest blog entries (an example would be Notes in Facebook). This dispells the myth that online networking can take too much time, you such manage your time differently that’s all.

Spend some time researching these tools, it may take a few hours of your time to find your way around but it will be time well spent. Then, start spreading your time between your online and offline networking. They both have their place, but online networking does give you a much wider exposure than any person could physically manage offline.