Our 2nd annual conference has been scheduled for Thursday 17th September from 9.00 to 5pm. The outline agenda has been released with more speakers to be confirmed. Book your place now before its too late as places are limited!
From the B2B Centre website -
About the Conference
We have a range of presentations and workshop sessions to explore ways that you can find and attract new clients and then manage the relationship that you have with those customers to encourage repeat business.
This year we have included case studies from two of the B2B Centre’s clients, Severn Partnership and KSBKids, to provide a practical insight into how SMEs can use technology to good effect. You will be able to draw inspiration from their stories of overcoming some of the obstacles and finding the best ways to use websites, social media and dedicated customer systems.
Outline Agenda
* 8.30 Registration and Coffee
* 9.30 Welcome
* 9.40 Search Marketing for SMEs
* 10.20 Workshop 1
Social Media for business success – Malene Stanley, KSBKids
Automatic content distribution – James Pennington, NB2BC
* 11.05 Break
* 11.45 email marketing best practice – Dr Dave Chaffey, Marketing Insights
* 12.15 Q&A
* 12.30 Lunch, Digital Lab Demos
* 14.00 Customer Management for SMEs
* 14.40 Workshop 2 – Managing customer relationships…in the real world – Nick Blenkarn, Severn Partnership
Get it right – Planning for CRM – Steve Orriss, NB2BC
* 15.25 Q&A
* 15.45 Conference close
* 16.00 Refreshments, networking, optional Digital Lab tour
We’re running the members networking event at Aston Science Park on Thursday 2nd July (17:00 – 20:00). To book on the event go to www.nb2bc.co.uk/events. More details below:
Members Networking
This is a great opportunity to join together with your peers from small and medium sized businesses to discuss your e-business experiences. With up to 60 other businesses present this is a great chance to extend your networks in the West Midlands, build awareness of your company, and discuss your ideas with like-minded people.
This event includes networking time, exercises to enable you to meet as many people as possible and a chance to bring along some business literature.
Agenda will include:
Registration and Networking
Welcome Speech
Guest Speaker
Members Business Pitches
Networking and Buffet
There will be plenty of opportunities to meet other delegates during the course of the evening. So feel free to mingle, exchange business cards or ask the B2B Centre staff for e-business advice.
Got the Brewferm Gallia Beer Kit bottled yesterday, 21 bottles of varying shapes and sizes including my new swing top bottles from Youngs Home Brew. The process was fairly straight forward siphoning the brew into a bucket to mix 100g of sugar then into the bottles. For some reason during fermentation this kit almost escaped the 5 gallon fermentation vessel with the froth almost reaching the lid of the bucket despite the brew only being 12 litres.
The Brewferm Christmas beer has had one week of fermentation and should be ready to be bottled next weekend.
In a meeting with Jim Reah from Heritage Polish and Gareth Edwards from the B2B Centre and just finding out how Heritage Leather Care can be used a wide range of items from leather seats in Jaguars to buses and helicopters.
Dingley Dell make Wood Burning Pizza Ovens, garden heaters and other interesting products for home and businesses. They’ve just started using Flickr to promote their products and show off the products and expertise of the company. The photos that have been taken are professional and look great, Flickr is a excellent way of promoting your products and increasing the visibility of your company and products on the web.
Make sure you give each photo a good title and description and tag it with relevant keywords. Don’t forget to include a link or links back to your website and/or blog in your Flickr profile page.
Last week I bottled my Belgium Brewferm home brew beers, I made 19 bottles of Diablo and 21 bottles of Framboos. The whole process was fairly straight forward, with cleaning the bottles being the most time consuming part. The final gravity was 1.012 for the diablo and 1.013 for the framboos, despite warnings on the hydrometer and the brewferm instructions I was recommended to bottle it at these levels as it had over 2 weeks of fermentation and other people’s experiance had seemed to work out well with breferm home brew. There’s been no exploding beer bottles so far! The more I research around home brewing the more I reaslise how poor the instructions that come with the kits are.
Highly recommend the rotating bottle drainer, it made sorting out the clean bottles a lot easier. The beers have had a week at room temperature and now have been moved to the coldest place in the shed. The beers will be ready at the start of July.
Next up Brewferm Gallia.
Good to see Urban Huna getting their blog up and running to promote their 2 huna workshops coming up in October. They’re using WordPress with the SEO pack and a free template.
The latest event we’re running at the B2B Centre is called Success with Social Media for small businesses on Wednesday 9th June 2009 at the University of Warwick in Coventry. The agenda is below. Book your place now!
Agenda
9.30 Registration and Coffee
10.00 Introduction
10.10 Supercharge Your Social Media – What is it and why you should be interested
11.00 Case study
11.15 Coffee
11.30 Promoting your profile – Effective use of LinkedIn
12.15 Case study
12.30 Q&A
12.45 Lunch and networking
Started the Brewferm Framboise Beer kit (I would link directly to the kit but I can’t because the site is entirely in flash, not good for SEO!) at the weekend which had been sitting in my kitchen since January. Another purchase from Brewgenie, although Wilkinson’s now has a good range of home brew supplies which is useful to pop in and stock up.
The kit was easy to get going with good instructions, better than the last Yorkshire brew I did. This time the beer kit will make about 12 litres which I am going to bottle with my Emily capping machine. Pictures from the brew -
Next up the Brewferm Diablo beerkit.
Our next big event at the B2B Centre will be on the 19th May from 7.30am, it will show how CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems can transform the way businesses operate. The agenda is:
7.30 Registration and breakfast
8.00 CRM: Identify, win and retain profitable customers
8.45 Case study
9.10 Demonstration
9.30 Q&A
10.00 Close
It’s free to attend for small and medium sized businesses based in the West Midlands region – book your place now!
