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Following a stonking first year in 2010, Sevenoaks Business Show is back again at the Stag Theatre in Sevenoaks on 30th March. Last year we had a diverse mix of businesses, from recruitment agencies and telecoms to wealth management, web design and… us! Preparation is well under way for this years’ show which is set to be bigger and better than last year. Entry is free to all delegates so the show is a must for your diary. I’ll let you know more about the show as the event gets closer, but for now make sure you’re free on the day!

These days, with it being so easy and relatively low cost to get your message out online, should you bother promoting your business via good old fashioned print any more? Well, according to an article in the Daily Telegraph, you should:

‘E-readers ‘too easy’ to read

Readers using electronic books like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader are less likely to remember what thet have read because the devices are so easy on the eyes, research suggests.

By Nick Collins 8:47PM GMT 13 Jan 2011

At the start of the new year, we all know we should be promoting our business. With businesses still recovering from snow-hit December, cash might be a little bit tight which means marketing may well go on the back burner. Fear not! (apologies for the cheese factor) Once again we’re running a ridiculously cool competition through our print franchise, printing.com.

Entering is dead easy. All we’re asking for is a shameless plug – get our name out there in the most inventive way possible! Last year, people tweeted about us, blogged about us, took photos of themselves holding our banners – have a look at some of last years’ entries here. All you have to do is email us the evidence of your plug, and we’ll put your entry in a gallery with all of the other entries. The public vote for their favourite and if it’s you, you get a great big £1,000 to spend on printing! That can’t be bad for the new year now, can it. Get cracking – I can’t wait to see your entries!

2010 has been a hectic, frenetic and challenging year for us at Ditto. The snow hit us badly in January (as it did our clients), and we had a couple of huge obstacles to overcome through the course of the year, which seemed insurmountable at the time. Despite all of that, I want to take a moment to reflect on the strong progress we’ve made this year, as in many ways this year has been a big turning point for us!

Anyone who has been working with us since we opened for business almost 7 years ago will know just how much we’ve grown and evolved, but this year was a corker in terms of real, strong growth. We’ve met some fantastic new clients, forged close working relationships and have been lucky enough to get involved in some fascinating projects. The whole team have invested a lot of time in developing our skills – I can rarely be found without a stack of marketing books on my desk, Dan has progressed hugely with his design and illustration skills and Derek has been through training so we can now offer websites. Aside from personal developments, more and more involved work with our clients and concentrating on our sales and marketing, we’ve all faced the challenges of running a business in a not-quite-recovered-yet economy. Anyone who runs a business will know how tough it can be, and when you have unexpected problems thrown your way it makes it all the more difficult!

2010 has been the year that we’ve had the chance to redefine what we do. We’ve had to get our heads together and figure out what it is that Ditto does – we’ve evolved in such a way that our mission was no longer clearly definied. We know that getting this right is crucial; after all, if you don’t know what you do, how will anyone else? By the way, if you’re feeling the same about your business I highly recommend putting pen to paper and listing what you do and what you want to do – it’s tough but totally worthwhile! With the help of my blog (ironic to think I started out dabbling with the idea of blogging, and now I’m managing a blog for someone else and achieveing readership of my own blog waaaay beyond anything I ever hoped for), we’re now attracting exactly the sorts of clients that we love to work with, which is a fantastic start to the new year. We’re not the types of people to get complacent though – as I type, we’re working on relaunching our new branding, website, blog (we’ll soon be migrating to WordPress – more on that later!) and twitter page to reflect what we do. I love the fact that we’re being asked to help at the concept stage of our clients marketing now – I love getting stuck into planning a promotion as it’s always great fun!

We’ve spent the last few days planning our strategy and marketing plan for 2011 (I’m slightly ashamed to say that this is the first time we’ve ever been organised enough to plan ahead), and I’m really looking forward to building on our strong progress this year. For me personally, I’m so proud of everything we’ve done this year. There were times when things got very scary – the backdated business rates demand which landed in June with lots of zeros on the end knocked me sideways – but we’re still here, armed with a fantastic tribe of loyal clients and we’re more profitable than ever before.

I hope your year has been successful too. When you run a business it can be so hard to find a moment to look back on all the brilliant achievements – so take a moment and give yourself a pat on the back for all that you’ve done. So here we are – 2010 draws to a close. Cheers everyone, have a very merry Christmas and a fantastic new year.

We were really excited to be asked to design the promotional items for a fantastic event in aid of Help for Heroes. We were approached by the very lovely Tony Rae to help him create invitations and posters for a white collar fight night, and couldn’t wait to get started. In terms of content, they’re fairly simple – but Dan has used some stunning typography to really convey the glamour and prestige of the evening. Have a look!

Blimey. I’ve spent the last two and a bit days furiously scribbling on countless sheets of A4 paper in an attempt to formulate next years business plan. I have to be honest – aside from writing business plans to gain funding, we’ve not formally reviewed our business plan since the early days (to say our current business plan was gathering dust is an understatement!), so this was a long overdue job.

So where do you start writing a business plan? What’s the point? Does it actually do any good? Well, I have to say that writing this plan was a surprising enjoyable exercise. It’s focused what we’re doing, where we’re going and where we’ve come from. With some projects up our sleeves for 2011 (more on that later!), it was important to put pen to paper and figure out what we expect from the business, and how we’re going to get it. It made me realise how far we’ve come in just a year, and what we can do over the next few months if we really put our minds to it.

I don’t profess to be an expert in this sort of thing, but I certainly do recommend you take a day to review your business plan if, like me, you haven’t done so for a while. I revisited the Business Link website to help guide me through the process, and found it fantastically helpful. If you’re entering the new year without a clear set of goals, take some time now to put a plan together. I promise it will be helpful!

After much preparation, research and moments of writers’ block, I’m proud to present Rotosound’s blog. If you missed my earlier post, Rotosound are the only UK based manufacturer of music strings and are based here in sunny Sevenoaks. Established in the 1950′s, they have supplied strings to some huge names within the music industry – Jimmy Hendrix, Sir Paul McCartney, Florence and the Machine, Oasis, Pendulum and tons of others. The blog was set up to share news of new endorsees, events and shows that the guys at Rotosound attend which currently isn’t out there. Their blog provides a fantastic outlet for all of this news and will help them interact with their clients, building stronger relationships and brand awareness. As I’ve learnt from my own blog, this will grow and develop fairly organically but so far I’m really pleased with the direction it’s heading. Jason at Rotosound has been lovely to work with and has provided me with loads of information to help get me started (he’s also given me much needed encouragement to pick up my own guitar and start playing again!), so I’m really looking forward to continuing to work alongside him on this project. Have a read and let me know what you think!

The brief was to create something simple, christmassey and glamourous to promote a Christmas event. I’m pretty darn pleased with the results: