- Original Poster
- #1
Hi Everyone,
Some of you may have seen the various changes around the site that the team and I have been working on in recent months, and I’d like to give you an update on some of these changes and also on what is Coming Soon™.
Firstly it wouldn’t be April if I didn’t mention @JEREMY HAWKE post on April 1st regarding our recent acquisition of Mumsnet. Well played Jeremy, we have acquired a couple of communities but Mumsnet isn’t one of them ?
We’ve made a number of design changes around this website all driving UKBF towards becoming the membership organisation and small business support resource for UK start-ups and small businesses. We have changed the structure of the homepage already with some more tweaks to come, and we have also changed the structure of our editorial content with some further navigation improvements underway. We are increasing the production of our editorial as more writers come on board, and we are also developing a range of start-up guides for different businesses and sectors.
You may also note that the blogging and member creation of editorial content has now completely been removed, but we have created a Community Writers tier of membership. This is by Invitation Only and cannot be applied for or purchased. Invited writers from the community who wish to get involved in writing content on their subject matter can do so. Currently, @MOIC and @HFE Signs are our first community writers.
Behind the scenes, with these changes to the editorial content we’re busy building a resource library for business owners, which includes template shareholder agreements (that’ll make @The Resolver happy), debt recovery letters, template employment contracts and more are being added continuously by our partner organisations supporting this project. We’ll be launching this resource as part of the bigger membership changes covered below.
It was nice to see @ctrlbrk feedback picking up on the new changes we brought in for New Members as part of our work in making UKBF a welcoming and supportive place for people joining. Sometimes it is all too easy to forget that as an experienced business owner of many years what may seem obvious to some isn’t obvious to someone new to business, and not benefiting from 10, 20 or more years of experience. So a little reminder to both new members to add enough information to their posts and to established members to remind them the post is from a new member perhaps without years of experience behind them will help smoothen the welcome to the community.
We have also gone live with Perspective on the forums to proactively monitor for inappropriate messages and tone, giving a gentle reminder if a post may come across as more brutal or toxic than we’d like or sometimes intend. This has gone live with our new moderation guidelines and warning system, all part of the ambition to make UKBF a welcoming and supportive environment for the hundreds (millions) of small business owners in the UK.
We’ll be updating our Terms of Membership next month for UKBF which I’ll post here in a few weeks. These will be a significant change in the structure of the site as they fundamentally change the terms from being a member of just a community to each member being a member of a business membership organisation. For anyone who doesn’t wish to remain a member we’ll provide the tools to opt-out and have your account deleted but I hope the member benefits we have lined up will provide plenty of reasons to remain a member of UKBF. We’re also expanding the Business Membership to include special rates for business banking, low transaction fees for card payment processing, best-in-market mobile phone package, and so much more. Not to mention the resource library I covered earlier. We are aiming for a Q3 launch of this, but need to get the membership terms in place before we can launch this hence this change being put in place first.
If you haven’t seen it already we have a great email that is sent out every Monday which, as well as keeping you informed of our weekly webinar and podcast releases, also includes a very useful signposting section highlighting useful business resources out there to support business owners. These can be anything from other webinars or events to useful information published by anyone from the FSB, Enterprise Nation or any other business support network which we feel would be useful and helpful to UKBF members.
If you don’t already receive this email you can sign up here to keep informed, it is intended as an invaluable resource for all business owners.
Lastly, we are finally at a stage to re-launch our B2B comparison service. We tried to launch almost a year ago but very soon found out we needed to be FCA regulated to launch such a service, which comes with a whole tranche of new operating procedures and staffing requirements. Just goes to show that even with approaching 30 years experience of running my own business, mistakes still get made and things get missed. Happens to us all, but we’re here now and our new Head of Comparison joins the team with a wealth of experience having come from a senior position in Compare The Market and will be heading up this part of this part of the business that makes UKBF possible and sustainable - separate announcement about this in the next few weeks.
As always, thank you for being here and being part of UKBF and see you around in the forums.
Some of you may have seen the various changes around the site that the team and I have been working on in recent months, and I’d like to give you an update on some of these changes and also on what is Coming Soon™.
Firstly it wouldn’t be April if I didn’t mention @JEREMY HAWKE post on April 1st regarding our recent acquisition of Mumsnet. Well played Jeremy, we have acquired a couple of communities but Mumsnet isn’t one of them ?
We’ve made a number of design changes around this website all driving UKBF towards becoming the membership organisation and small business support resource for UK start-ups and small businesses. We have changed the structure of the homepage already with some more tweaks to come, and we have also changed the structure of our editorial content with some further navigation improvements underway. We are increasing the production of our editorial as more writers come on board, and we are also developing a range of start-up guides for different businesses and sectors.
You may also note that the blogging and member creation of editorial content has now completely been removed, but we have created a Community Writers tier of membership. This is by Invitation Only and cannot be applied for or purchased. Invited writers from the community who wish to get involved in writing content on their subject matter can do so. Currently, @MOIC and @HFE Signs are our first community writers.
Behind the scenes, with these changes to the editorial content we’re busy building a resource library for business owners, which includes template shareholder agreements (that’ll make @The Resolver happy), debt recovery letters, template employment contracts and more are being added continuously by our partner organisations supporting this project. We’ll be launching this resource as part of the bigger membership changes covered below.
It was nice to see @ctrlbrk feedback picking up on the new changes we brought in for New Members as part of our work in making UKBF a welcoming and supportive place for people joining. Sometimes it is all too easy to forget that as an experienced business owner of many years what may seem obvious to some isn’t obvious to someone new to business, and not benefiting from 10, 20 or more years of experience. So a little reminder to both new members to add enough information to their posts and to established members to remind them the post is from a new member perhaps without years of experience behind them will help smoothen the welcome to the community.
We have also gone live with Perspective on the forums to proactively monitor for inappropriate messages and tone, giving a gentle reminder if a post may come across as more brutal or toxic than we’d like or sometimes intend. This has gone live with our new moderation guidelines and warning system, all part of the ambition to make UKBF a welcoming and supportive environment for the hundreds (millions) of small business owners in the UK.
We’ll be updating our Terms of Membership next month for UKBF which I’ll post here in a few weeks. These will be a significant change in the structure of the site as they fundamentally change the terms from being a member of just a community to each member being a member of a business membership organisation. For anyone who doesn’t wish to remain a member we’ll provide the tools to opt-out and have your account deleted but I hope the member benefits we have lined up will provide plenty of reasons to remain a member of UKBF. We’re also expanding the Business Membership to include special rates for business banking, low transaction fees for card payment processing, best-in-market mobile phone package, and so much more. Not to mention the resource library I covered earlier. We are aiming for a Q3 launch of this, but need to get the membership terms in place before we can launch this hence this change being put in place first.
If you haven’t seen it already we have a great email that is sent out every Monday which, as well as keeping you informed of our weekly webinar and podcast releases, also includes a very useful signposting section highlighting useful business resources out there to support business owners. These can be anything from other webinars or events to useful information published by anyone from the FSB, Enterprise Nation or any other business support network which we feel would be useful and helpful to UKBF members.
If you don’t already receive this email you can sign up here to keep informed, it is intended as an invaluable resource for all business owners.
Lastly, we are finally at a stage to re-launch our B2B comparison service. We tried to launch almost a year ago but very soon found out we needed to be FCA regulated to launch such a service, which comes with a whole tranche of new operating procedures and staffing requirements. Just goes to show that even with approaching 30 years experience of running my own business, mistakes still get made and things get missed. Happens to us all, but we’re here now and our new Head of Comparison joins the team with a wealth of experience having come from a senior position in Compare The Market and will be heading up this part of this part of the business that makes UKBF possible and sustainable - separate announcement about this in the next few weeks.
As always, thank you for being here and being part of UKBF and see you around in the forums.
