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Suggest an easy way to find out what kinds of articles newspapers (print and online) want to run about businesses of your type is to do an advanced search on Google [search terms defining your company], press releases. When you see what works for other people, you'll be able to re-use the principles for yourself.

Obvious possibiities are the "good news" angle - you expanding your business and starting a retail shop in the middle of a recession; also the human interest one - you advising people stuck for ideas on Xmas presents how they can go about thinking up something suitable for Great Aunt Jane.

Make sure journalists promise to include your web site address and company name in each article you help them write; then check they've done so! If they haven't, ring them up afterwards and get them to print an apology which does include this vital information (gives you 2 bites of the cherry as well).

At this stage in the game, you're only likely to attract local paid and unpaid media. It might be worth your while to look up what's available, their circulations and contact details in BRAD (a directory your city library will almost certainly have).

I'd strongly recommend cherishing your journalist contacts. Get back to them ASAP, well before their deadlines if possible and try to use vivid, quotable language.

You'll find umpteen articles on how to write a press release on the web. As you're unlikely to be a professional writer, the most effective approach is normally to home in on what the journalist's target audience would want to read, explain your idea and then get him / her to write it.

Good luck!

Agreed, God help all of us! My guess is there'll be a government policy rethink by January but oodles of damage will be done by then.

I'm worried about the way things are going too.

I agree what the government's proposing at the moment is unfair, they have to throw a sop to their traditional supporters and damn the rest of us.

They're also in a bind, aren't they? They were stupid to commit themselves to cutting the benefits bill so drastically when they know "lifestyle choices" not to work account for such a miniscule amount of the bill. Even their traditional supporters don't want to see the end of state pensions for OAPS, of child benefit (for married parents only!!) and of support for multiply handicapped or terminally ill people incapable of working.

If they hadn't made such unrealistic claims, maybe they would have left the child benefits issue alone.

Incidentally, the most astonishing fact about benefit levels is that they weren't originally set according to how much money people need to meet basic needs (eg a roof over their heads, healthy food, adequate heating for health, etc). All the people with real knowledge of the issues (eg CAB, Child Poverty Action Group, etc) have said for 20 years or so that benefit levels should be increased by about 20% to meet these basic costs. Some groups are worse off than others (eg I'm a right Scrooge but defy anyone to live wholly on the amount of money a single job seeker gets each week).

When governments have such an unrealistic view of the amount of money it costs to pay for the bare essentials in today's Britain, it's not surprising that they get the minimum wage wrong (it should be higher if the tax payer's to avoid subsidising the housing costs of the badly paid workers and non-workers alike).

Where's the next Beveridge?

All sounds very positive.

For info, I've done my own books for years but started off having them done by a firm of chartered accountants.

Would it be useful to make contact with the local organisations involved in assisting start-ups and offer a (limited) query answering service to new businesses? Eg 5 questions answered, then let me quote to do your books??

I agree with MagnifyB.

Hi Tomsk

I felt the graphic was irrelevant to the product you're selling - why not one of a business caller - hanging on on the 'phone and being "sent" selling messages?

I'd have preferred a layout set out on the following lines:-

Item (1) An explanation of the benefits to Customer of the product - eg keep your callers online until you can take their call; sell to them while they're waiting.

Item (2) How you deliver these benefits - Option 1, Option 2 (please explain what the sales / marketing value difference are between the options - I can't work it out instantly from the information you've given me)

Item (3) Other information
[eg * Messages last 5 - 6 minutes, giving you the facility to insert 6 - 8 different selling messages;
*Messages start randomly at different points, so on hold callers hear a different selling message each time they ring;
* These on hold systems plug into your existing telephone systems, using its phone jack, in almost every case - see our contacts page for further information.

Hope these suggestions help. From the point of view of your experiment, I'm a good guinea pig as I'm a 100% non techie!!

Best wishes, Linda

Congrats Alison

This article's the first of many, right???

Best wishes, Linda

Public transport (outside of the big cities) certainly isn't ... and I speak as someone who tries to be "green".

Site created by fed-up cruiseliner medics? Improved my evening no end.

We haven't exactly got much choice have we? They're all brilliant at dodging the issues us ordinary mortals worry about (eg where the new jobs are coming from to replace the ones we're losing overseas and why so many have got so little left after paying their bills). And I still can't see how we can put Blair, Straw, Hoon and co in jail for taking us into the Iraq war.