How about some PR

When I started the business I have to say I was fairly unversed in the arts of PR. I still am to be honest – but a little more aware. I have to say I find it pretty painful to write up Press Releases and try and put together media packs of various descriptions. But that said, it’s really worth it. I launched the site at the end of June ‘06 – and started to run some PR in mid July. I think summer maybe a good time in terms of getting angles published. A friend of mine was a sub-editor in one of the Sunday Newspapers – I got him to have a run through my Press Release – he made quite a few structural changes – but essentially left the message roughly the same but it was much tighter. Having a really tight and succinct press release is really important. And obviously have a really punchy headline. I’m no expert in this so will leave it as a general rule for anyone writing releases.

But once I was happy with the press release and got together some nice photos I then started emailing and ringing around the various lifestyle and business editors from all the national and regional newspapers. I had two angles that I was trying to push – firstly, lifestyle – a new online children’s site for time poor cash rich mothers – the site was to be an alternative to high street shopping etc… The other story that I suggested to go with was the business angle – discuss the experience of setting up a new business.

Both of these stories were well taken up by both national and regional newspapers. I had coverage in the Irish Times, Indo, Sunday Tribune on lifestyle and on the business story got coverage from The Sunday Business Post, Sunday Times, Irish Indo. A lot of the regional papers ran with lifestyle coverage – like the Kerryman, Corkman, Longford Leader, Donegal Democrat

And then in the run up to Xmas I got a lot more coverage from the Indo again in the Magazine on Saturday. This year I haven’t been as proactive as I should have been with pursuing PR – but still have gotten mentions in various parenting magazines, Fashion Magazines such as Image, and Parenting Supplements in National Newspapers. You really need to keep at it – as painful as that might be.

There’s a Media Contact Directory that you can buy that has all the editors and Journos details in – buy that, get yourself prepared with your P Release and start emailing and calling away. And hopefully you get some coverage – plus it’s all free. Also, use all your contacts – you’d be amazed how many people you know working in media that can get you some PR.

 

Building the website

When it came to building the website, I had a reasonable idea what I was looking for. I had thought about how I wanted the site to look and what the user experience should be. Firstly, I wanted the site to be fun an friendly – its a kids products site – so you want people who come into it not be confronted with a seriously stuffy corporate website – rather something with a modicum of personality. Also wanted the purchase path for people to be as simple as possible. I didnt want people to have register to set up an account or divulge all their personal details before they can actually buy something. I also wanted the site to be easily navigable without having to wade through endless menu structures and click throughs.

So I put together a brief of what I was looking for and then went and checked out the Golden Spiders to see who had done well that year – came accross some of the companies and got in touch with them. Some of them were very good at getting back – some of them were crap (so obviously didnt pursue them). And went and met the ones who came back to me and seemed to know what they were talking about. The prices varied quite a lot. To my mind it was a straight forward build. So I was surprised at the variance.

I eventually went with a company who were a good price, very upfront and spent a lot of time going through the requirements with me, knew their way around SEO and constructed their site accordingly. They had a proprietary tool called to build the site – which had an ok back end system to manage the site and look at reports and statistics etc….As is the problem with these things you dont get your hands really dirty until the site is constructed and then you realise the limitations. I was happy withthe design process that they used – they had a great graphic designer. I was going to use the graphic designer that had developed my identity but was advised by a few different people that good print design does not always equal good web design. And I think this is probably the case.

Anyway, the web design and development process took longer than I expected. I was led to believe 5 weeks – provided I hadd all the images and desiptions, and product attributes etc… on hand. This is a lot of work – especially if you have 100’s of products. Anyway – I had a fair amount of this done but unforutnately the web co were juggling lots of balls, and there was only a certain amount of time for me – between the jigs and the reels, it took about 10 weeks to build the site. And I ended up doing most of the product population – which should have been the web co but they would have taken an age to do it – and probably made a bags of it.

So I did that bit. Whihc was good as it gave me a crash course in the CMS application. Straightaway I realised its limitations. Features that it should have had but didnt. This is one of the areas that you need to be aware of when getting a site built. Try and anticipate all eventualities and requirements when you are talking to web co.’s. Because you’ll find when you get the site that its missing a load of things that you thought should have been there but didnt have the prescience to ask.

So the alternative to going down the company with proprietary web builder tool is to get it built from scratch (bottom up) from an independent developer(s) – the cost in this may be prohibitive if you want to get the site up and running fast with an off the shelf type solution. But at the other end if the developers are good you will get a system tailor made to your spec and will have ultimate control of the site. Because one of the things that people may not have thought about is when you use these off the shelf solutions that you are tied in with these because your whole website runs off the udnerlying engine of the so-called ‘proprietary software’ so that means you cant just up sticks and get the site hosted elsewhere as you get tied into hosting and support with the web co. Its money for old rope for them, as they charge you your annual fee and give you f all back in return.

Next I’ll be chatting about the payment provider that I used and why I chose them – if I can remember.

Name, Logo and Trademark

Initally after I had decided that I was going to set up this business I decided that I needed to get some sort of image for the business. So that when I was chatting to people about it, that at least I had a name and a logo. A name is a name – I was happy with Baba Beag – it was Irish (which some people thought was a bit restrictive in terms of take up outside of Ireland – and for the nearly 4 million people who dont speak the language in Ireland. But we decided that it wasnt going to be a huge issue – as most of the business was going to be from Ireland inititally and that most people could understand what ‘baba’ meant – its pretty universal and Beag – well even if you dont know what that means you could probably hazard a guess). In fact baba beag was what myself and my wife called our first baby – Maya. So at least it meant something to me. I find a lot of online businesses come up with these generic names – lile babygifts – or somesuch – probably for search engine reasons and possibly lack of any other ideas – so I like a name that isnt generic and it represents an idea etc…

Anyway, having decided a name – I then got a graphic designer to draw up the name and create a logo with it. He was very good – paul@judodesign.ie – he’s living down in Sligo – really nice guy and very good – you discuss with him what you want in terms of the meaning, tone – all that stuff – and he interprets it and comes back with great ideas. Well worth the money. Some designers you have to hand hold them all the way through – but not with this guy. So we were very happy with the outcome on that. Then got biz cards etc.. printed up. Maybe look around for cheaper options on the cards, letterheads, comp slips and even things like flyers and other printware – I spent quite a lot of cash on these – and could have gotten a better deal (for slightly less quality) – depends on what you’re looking for.

Then you go register the Logo and name as a Trademark. This was a piece of P. You could have gone and got a patents lawyer to do this for you (and they will tell you that you should have) but the truth is you can do it yourself with minimum hassle. Just print off the logo, choose the category(ies) that you are trading in and send it down to the Patents office on the HEBRON Road on the West Bank (more commonly known as Kilkenny). They come back to you in a couple of months, you pay €177 and its all yours.

After that the next step was to look at developing the website. Assuming you’ve got some money to do so.

More on that later.

Another Go..

Having been mentioned in Keith Bohanna’s review of non-techie business blogs – I thought I better get my finger out and actually write something. Amazingly 16 people viewed my blog on the day that it was mentioned – so apologies to all 16 of you – who would have been very underwhelmed by what you saw.

Im still trying to figure out what it is that im meant to be writing about. I was thinking of rather than just unashamedly writing a blog about a particular business – which is pretty dull – even for me to write about. I thought Id start by just generally discussing how i got into the business and what went well starting it up and what didnt and look at some of the decisions that were made that were good, bad and appalling.

So to start with, my background is software development – worked in Irish companies such as Eontec, and larger ones such as Siebel. Left that about 18 months ago and then looked at setting up an online business selling kids products. Seemed like a good idea – Irelands in the middle of a baby boom and more people moving to online shopping. Of course lots of others are now in that space too.

Having worked in organisations where you have a very specific role – you realise when stepping out of that role, that you havent got a clue in general terms what it is to start and run your own business. Down to every last thing. Even fixing your computer when it goes pear shaped. You’re just so mollycoddled by having the support in place for absolutely everything.

So that was a very good experience – realising how little you actually knew. The first port of call for me was the local Enterprise centre – in my case Terenure in Dublin – and they were great. Really supportive. Lots of great advice. Michelle Hannon – who looks after start ups there was super. She knew her way around all the possible ways of getting grants, programmes available, just loads of information and ideas. So I would definitely recommend chatting to them at the start to see whats available in terms of support.

Also, the Dublin City Enterprise Board were very supportive. Greg Swift and Eibhlin Curley are great. In my case I got a website grant for 2,500 and an employment grant for 6000 with minimal hassle and overhead. The main thing is to have a half way decent business plan to start with – which is hard enough – but well worth putting the effort in. Michelle Hannon helped me out no end in this. She had the misfortune of reading a few of my drafts – but eventually we got there. I have to say it stood me in good stead as I used it for the Bank, grants, etc…

And finally for this post, which hopefully has kick-started my blogging career – I also, got on to the M50 Programme whihc helps promote new businesses. Its run out of IT Tallaght and is managed and co-ordinated by Patricia O’Sullivan and Angela Tynan. The programme is great – Its 12 months long – there’s day long sessions that tackle particlular business issue – financials, sales, negotiating skills, strategic planning – etc…… but its really useful (and good fun) and its great for meeting people. As anyone knows who works on their own how isolated you can feel.

Thats it – that was meant to be a quick synopsis of start-uppy path – that sort of thing. Anyway – back for more soon.

If anyone’s got any advice about how to snazz up my Blog page – I’d be very appreciative.how do I get the icons for people to add to their feeds – like googeReader – Im embarrassed how poor this looks. Anyway….

A start is as good as..

This is my first post. The idea being to talk about what experiences I have had in running a small online business in Ireland – www.bababeag.ie. Maybe get feedback from others in a similar boat or those who are generally interested in whatever it is that ends up being discussed.

Intend to talk about things that i have learnt over the past year and a half and generally discuss what has worked for me and what hasn’t. Hopefully someone might get use out of it – probably me by musing aloud more than anyone else.

If anyone feels like commenting – feel free.