Vibrant day with small businesses

Today we ran another of our quarterly free advice days for small businesses. We had a full, sun-drenched day meeting, listening to and sharing ideas with a number of small businesses. Karen will be sharing a blog post on some of the day's highlights later next week.

Over the course of 2012, we have met some wonderful, enterprising and innovative small and start up businesses and are frequently quite taken back by the passion people have for the ideas they want to develop. Set against all the recession gloom, it's quite apparent to us that there are lots of small businesses, bursting with ideas and hopes, but many are having a tough time and we think this is a sector that needs all the help it can get. It is notable also that many don't give themselves enough options when thinking about marketing development for their brands and few make full use of simple, low-cost PR and communication tactics that can be adopted.

Some, when they first hear about our concept of free advice days think there's a catch. There isn't, they are what they are - and we're really pleased to be doing our bit to put something back into the community and to make a difference.  Days like today give our team members an added spring in their step and we will be continuing with this element of our community investment programme for the months ahead.  Our community programme helps give us our footprint, an added purpose and a soul.

News on more activity in the area in the next few weeks.