Thursday 21 August 2014

Specialist marketing services for senior doctors

One of my businesses that I don't often mention on Localventure is Medico Legal Marketing (www.medicolegalmarketing.co.uk).

This is a specialist business working solely with senior doctors, surgeons, consultants and GP's assisting them with increasing their revenue from their medico legal practice. The business has been active since 2009 and we have a wealth of contacts in this sector that enable us to increase flow of business for doctors from the specialist/expert witness side of their practice. This can be a lucrative area for doctors who are interested in using their medical skills in a more entrepreneurial way.

If you're a doctor (probably registrar level or higher) working in a senior position and have access to consulting rooms it is likely that we can help you add value and income to your knowledge.

Click on the above web link for full information.

Wednesday 20 August 2014

Read an article this morning ...

I read a piece this morning from a health industry website this morning.

I rarely have time to sit and read the articles they produce although I do receive two or three link bait e-mails from them daily for some reason. This article piqued my interest as it purportedly aimed to discuss the ramifications of advances in information technology and its effect on business.

As a business person/entrepreneur and big fan of tech I was interested to hear the thoughts of the  guest blogger on this site.

However on reading the brief (3 paragraph) piece I was disappointed. I won't embarrass the author by naming them in this post but in essence the writer told us that the internet was invented 25 years ago, employees can't get away from being on-line and sometimes answer e-mails out of hours and this is a bad thing. Oh and only 14% of people plan to see themselves working in a traditional office environment in the future.

Frankly there is so much more to talk about in terms of tech and work/employment - and I've already written the same amount as the writer just moaning about his piece - what about the effects of tech and the time saved in travel both for meetings and home worked, are employees more or less happy, did people ever want to work in an office in the first place and so on ?

I'm slightly frustrated by seeing this kind of low end, non-comment as I did discuss writing blog posts and creating a podcast for this outlet with them a couple of years ago and nothing ever got off the ground. In some ways it seems to me, reading some of their output that they are in fact simply producing content for the sake of doing so to generate hits to create ad revenue.

Monday 18 August 2014

Mac Mail finally working again

After nearly a year of using Mavericks on my two Macs, yesterday after much effort and many hours of googling and adjusting settings in preferences I have managed to get Mac Mail working properly.

Initially on downloading and installing Mavericks on release in 2013 I had the same problem as most gmail users that mail wouldn't replicate from the google properly and as a result, overnight I'd had to stop using Apple mail client almost completely.

However the main problem I had was a work related issue where my outlook server wouldn't accept the password on my new Mac Book when I tried to set it up on mail in April earlier this year. The account had historically worked reasonably well on my older iMac. I realised yesterday that one setting in the advanced interface on the Mac Book was wrong and when adjusted to be the same setting as the iMac, magically everything started working perfectly. In addition I discovered that in the intervening time period gmail has started working across the Mac system as well so my e-mail folder system has now replicated across both gmail and my two macs.

Trouble is of course now my work flow sits predominantly in gmail, aside from sending client e-mail - so need to come up with a system that uses both apps to the most advantage.

Phew - good things come to he who waits !


Wednesday 13 August 2014

Welcome back to work

As readers will know I've been away on holiday for a few weeks and in that time period I haven't blogged at all and only put a few non-business items up on @localventure on twitter.

I am however back this week and hope to begin blogging more regularly again as work settles back down and we begin the pull towards the end of 2014.

Whilst I was way I asked Roger Edwards from the MPAF podcasts to write a guest post for me covering off his love of business podcasting and giving some insight into the genesis of his podcast project. You will find this post immediately below this one. So please do read over Rogers comments and make sure you listen to his new podcast. You will find a link to his webpage at the bottom of his post and also an on-line streaming link to my interview on MPAF a few weeks ago to the right of this post - click and listen from here !

Lastly, PMICast will be back next week - watch out for news here and in the Twitter feed.

Phil

Guest Blog Post from Roger Edwards from the Marketing, Protection and Finance podcast


I’ve been listening to podcast for years. To my mind they are the ideal way to suck in knowledge and learn new skills and hear inspiring ideas. Admittedly they are much more popular in the States than in the UK mainly because our American marketers are about five years ahead of us in all things digital. Great shows like “The Mad Marketing Podcast” by Marcus Sheridan, “Content Warfare” by Ryan Hanley and “Six Pixels of Separation” by Mitch Joel.

After a little research I realised that there wasn’t a UK Podcast aimed at advisers and providers covering the marketing of protection and finance propositions. I became very excited at the prospect of filling this gap in the market. I could provide a useful resource and also use it as a vehicle to promote my marketing consultancy business.

So I asked a few people what they thought of the idea.

I heard the question, “What’s a podcast?” from quite a few people. Did this put me off launching the Marketing Protection and Finance Podcast? Not at all. I am convinced that the medium is as attractive to the UK audience as it is to those in the US. I just had to be prepared to spend time educating my potential audience to the benefits. A podcast is of course effectively a radio show that you download to listen to at your own convenience. That means you can listen to it in the car, on the train or on the treadmill. Shows of between 15 and 30 minutes fit with commute times and treadmill sessions.  

“Roger you must use video,” came the advice from an agency friend of mine. Whilst I believe that video is good I think audio is better. You can’t (or at least shouldn’t) watch video when you’re driving a car. It’s difficult, and shaky, to watch video on a treadmill. Audio works wherever you are and however long you have.

And the best thing about podcasting and using the interview style I’ve adopted for MPAF, is that I get to talk to lots of interesting people. By talking to advisers, marketers and experts I’m learning new stuff at the same time as I’m creating content for my audience. Though when I interviewed Phil there was a real danger that we might veer off the subject of social media and start talking about science fiction instead.

MPAF is now 6 episodes in and I have another 5 in the bag. I’ve actually have people approach me to appear on the show and I’m very pleased about that.

So please go and download a few episodes and have a listen. If you want to be on the show get in touch.