The CB4 Village Meeting for April 2010 will be held at the Ranch, 100 Histon Road, CB4 3JP on Weds 7 April 2010 from 8:30PM till late.

We look forward to seeing many of you there!

Posted under CB4 Village and it received 1 Comment

I am often surprised, when looking for a business I know of, how difficult it can be to find it.   Earlier today I was sending out some invitations to a group of people I previously met at various networking events: I have business cards for all of them but nonetheless I had serious problems finding the postal address for 5 out of 20 of them.

How is it possible that somebody who designing a website or a business card decides to leave out the postal address, the post code or any other detail that can be crucial to find your business?  Think about it: if you are difficult to find the odds are that a potential customer may decide to go to an easier to find competitor.

This is my check list: although not exaustive it probably helps to correct many basic mistakes:

• Have your full name, title, job title or profession on your business card;
• Have the full postal address on the business card;
• Have a “contact us” or “about us” page that has the full postal address and perhaps a Google map;
• Have a “our team” page and highlight who the top person/people behind the organisation are;
• Register your company on Google maps and then search the name of your company and the city where you are: you should really be on the first page!

Posted under Marketing - Please leave a comment for this post

The CB4 Village Meeting for March 2010 will be held at the Ranch, 100 Histon Road, CB4 3JP on Weds 10 March 2010.

We look forward to see many of you there!

Posted under CB4 Village and it received 3 Comments

Cambridge is an old city and, like many others, has serious traffic and parking problems, not really helped by an apparently car unfriendly City Council.  Public transport is encouraged by very high parking fees and relentless traffic wardens that are collecting hefty fines around the historical centre.  That is not a solution to typical situations of people that, like me, need to go to different places in a single trip, carrying bags and luggage and need to park in between.

A very annoying thing that often happens to me is finding a parking area where you would easily fit, say, 5 cars but because of the way other careless drivers have decided to park you can merely fit 3 or 4 and you waste many minutes driving and polluting, looking for another parking.  Another typical example is when, like in these pictures, people arrive, see an empty space at the end of the lot and they park close to the next car, wasting precious space that becomes totally unusable (highlighted in red).  When this happens I am always asking to myself: is it possible that they just don’t get it?  Can’t they see that nobody, until they move, will be able to use this space?

Obviously the right way is to park closest to the edge, without wasting any space: there will be a large gap between your car and the next one  but when that moves it will allow other drivers to park properly, helping the whole community to save time, CO2, money and anger .

Posted under Cambridge, Traffic - Please leave a comment for this post