So, to help UK businesses get to grips with how the Cloud can help them grow, we’ve produced a white paper which walks you through 10 easy steps to Cloud adoption. We appreciate that like anything, it’s only easy if you know how and we’re confident our jargon free approach will offer a refreshing perspective on Cloud Computing and how it can work for your business.

We’ve covered all bases to ensure maximum appeal and relevance to SMBs of varying size, industry sector and level of expertise. The white paper will not only offer you valuable, tailored advice, it will also help you get in your Financial Director’s good books.

Download your copy of ’10 steps to the Cloud for SMBs’ now.

1. CHOCO
2. Closed City
3. Disillusion
4. Donner
5. Flatr.
6. Kalliope
7. Mercury
8. Panic Station
9. Skyline
10. Xenon

1. AB&Co
2. BondMedia
3. Clearleft
4. Creative Jar
5. Engage Interactive
6. FFFunction
7. Flow Interactive
8. Great Fridays
9. Hype and Slippers
10. Maido
11. Mercy
12. Mike Kus
13. Pixeldot Creative
14. We Are Pollen
15. She Was Only
16. SMACK
17. Supereight Studio
18. The Barn
19. WickedWeb
20. SimonSays Digital

Who’s your favourite UK web designer or agency? Let us know by tweeting us at @Fasthosts

You are more likely to achieve your goals and ambitions if you take the time to plan the steps you need to follow in order for you to succeed.

Most people, who run a business, produce a business plan at the start. The plan helps to establish the right steps for the new business including what you need to do, what resources will be required and what you expect to happen. It may also be used when seeking investment or for backing up business loan application too.

Quite often, the business plan is quickly forgotten once the business has started. Some business owners will only review the plan if they are asked to by their bank manager etc. Others make business planning an annual event. The most effective business plan is one that is reviewed frequently and consistently to assess progress of business goals and targets and to set new ones.

Effective planning gives you the power to craft your own future, at least to some degree, rather than just reacting to external events. It keeps you organised and in control, as you always know the next step you need to take to achieve your goals. It stops you from spending too much time deciding what to do next or taking too many unnecessary, unfocused and ineffective steps.

Daily planning is an amazingly effective way to achieve both your own goals and the goals of the business. Spending between 20 and 30 minutes a day to plan the day ahead, will focus you on your business goals, energize you for the day ahead and stop allowing time to be wasted.  You will give yourself the chance to:

• review your progress on the specific business goals you’ve set;
• set your daily agenda;
• prioritize your tasks of the day.

Top 3 Planning Tips

1.   Do not allow yourself to be interrupted by anyone

• Turn off your emails and mobile phone
• Divert your phone to your answer phone
• Work in a space where you will not get interrupted or distracted by anyone else

2.  Plan your most demanding tasks into your most productive time of day

• Highlight the top three or four imperative tasks for the day
• Plan to do them in the most productive part of your day

3.  Don’t judge yourself on your performance of your daily agenda

• If you don’t get all the tasks that you’ve got on your list done, that doesn’t mean you have failed. It just means you didn’t get everything on your list done.
• Transfer whatever is left on your list to the top of the list for the next day.

Mark Twain hit it on the head when he said, “The Secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable ones – then starting on the first one.”

So, start planning today! Good luck!

In this article I will present you with six different personalities. After the description of each personality, take a few seconds to mark how strongly you are affected by this type of stress. The easiest marking is between 0 and 10, and you should mark intuitivily. The highest mark would show your predisposition. Most likely, you are a combination of the six.

Six personalities

The presentation of these personalities is partly based on Dr Karl Albrecht, a management consultant and a pioneer in the development of stress-reduction training for businesspeople, who defined four common types of stress in his 1979 book, “Stress and the Manager’.

1. Time Stresser

You experience a continuous lack of time, the things to do list is too  long, you don’t spend enough time on your tasks as you feel the need to haste because so many other tasks are waiting and it feels as if you are always in a rush. People might experience you as restless.

2. Anticipation Stresser

You stress because you anticipate an unwelcome outcome. You are ‘in the future’ and anxious about a situation or event that is not a reality. Examples are: ‘If I don’t get that order, than…….’ Or ‘OMG, if I get ill, what would happen ….? You are worried and concerned. Some people might call you a pessimist.

3. Situational Stresser

You face an unexpected situation, and are hit by the stress button big time. This surprise situation could be a real emergency, but it can also be less serious, like you forgot to send a letter, or did not print out a proposal. However, as a result of this surprise you stutter, shake, can’t think, panic, or show other behaviour that doesn’t change the situation for the better. Others might call you a ‘panicker’.

4. Social Stresser

You are nervous when in an unfamiliar situation, such as attending college for the first time, or when meeting new people, such as the first encounter with new colleagues. It confronts you with your need for control, and maybe makes you notice an insecurity around social interaction and confidence. You need some time and effort to feel ‘at home’, before you can act and react like yourself. You might be perceived as shy or reserved.

5. Intra personal Stresser

You  keep an internal dialogue going that is dominated by low confidence, low self-esteem, and low sense of self. This will bring you in an almost continuous state of anxiety and unhappiness. If you manage to stop the dialogue for parts of the day, you will function in the moment, but if the dialogue starts again, it will cause a state of being that is very unhealthy. You might have difficulty sleeping, focussing and people might perceive you as negative.

6. Performance Stresser

You mental focus is  continuously on challenging situations, like the budgetplan, a presentation or changing jobs. You are not able to let go and the topics are whirling in your head, wherever you are, whatever you do. You can’t switch off. People find you distracted or obsessive.

Most likely you will recognise yourself in all of the personalities. The strongest score will help you identify your vulnerability and point of focus, if you were to move into an out-of-control stress way of being. When the pressure takes over, and we are not in control, we are threatening our physical health, our mental health and our general well-being.

Written by Dr. Mariette Jasen.

Dr. Mariette Jansen holds a PHD in linguistics and interpersonal communication and has enjoyed a long and  successful corporate career within technology companies. She is determined to eradicate stress from modern living and is proud one of her programmes endorsed by Janey Lee Grace.

She can be contacted on 0796 771 7131 or by email on  mariette@stressfreecoaching.co.uk

Our Sales Manager, Frank Ashworth will be presenting  the ’10 steps of cloud adoption’  in the Cloud & Hosting theatre on Wednesday 24 April at 11.30. We’ll also have experts on hand to discuss all your product needs at our stand over the three day exhibition.

We love any opportunity to meet new and existing customers, network with our peers and share insight about the future of the Cloud. We’ve got loads of helpful information for you to take away, as well as an exclusive offer and competition available to take part in.

Visit our stand and you will receive two months free on cloud and hosted solutions purchased within four weeks of the event.* For a chance to win an iphone 5, take 60 seconds to complete our survey, drop your entry in the box and we’ll pick a lucky winner at random.

Now’s the time to book your tickets, get your killer questions ready and enjoy a great day out packed full of all the tips, advice and technology you could wish for. Visit www.internetworld.co.uk to find out more.

*Terms and conditions apply

There’s nothing that you need to do to benefit from this free upgrade, simply enjoy the extra storage space. If you have other mailboxes that could benefit from this added feature then it’s a great time to upgrade them to a Professional mailbox.

If you’ve already purchased additional storage space for your Professional mailbox, you’ll still be included in the upgrade and will no longer incur any extra charge for the additional space that is now included as standard.

To discuss any aspect of this update further or to upgrade mailboxes to Professional level, call sales on 0808 1686 777 or visit www.fasthosts.co.uk/email-hosting/

Are you using the right keywords and phrases? Are you active on social media channels? Do you have a blog? Have you tried pay-per-click advertising? Are you sending out an email newsletter? If you answer yes to most of these, then you can pat yourself on the back. But why — when you look at the analytics — do you find that visitors are taking one look at your website and leaving again?

Your website is your online calling card — it is the hub of all of your marketing activity. It is the place that you are driving everyone to in the hopes of converting interested browsers into loyal buyers. But is it up to the job?

Here are eight ways that your website could be putting people off:

It’s all about you and not about them

Do a “we” and “you” count on your website. Is your copy all about you? It’s time to change the focus — tell your audience what you can do for them. Show that you understand their needs and can solve their problems. And make sure this is crystal clear on your home page.

Living in the past

Many businesses use the About Us pages to write a potted history of the company. Stop living in the past and refocus your content on what you do in the here and now. Describe what you offer clearly, show how you can help and make it relevant to your audience today.

Jumping through hoops

If you run an ecommerce website, work out how many stages someone has to go through to buy from you — and then try and reduce them. Do they have to register first? Is that really necessary? Make sure you offer automatic address look-up options — they speed things up and improve accuracy.

The waiting game

Slow-loading website pages are a massive turn-off. All the research shows that faster speeds lead to more business, it’s as simple as that.

Outdated content

If you’ve got a news or blog page, you must keep it up to date and fresh. If someone arrives on a page and the most recent post is several months old, it looks unprofessional and it could even suggest that you may have gone out of business.

What’s the answer?

The great thing about a website is that it can provide all the information that your customers need in one place. So when they make contact, they’ve done their research and are often ready to buy. I was researching hotels online recently and one website was asking customers to email them if they wanted a copy of the latest menu! That is absolutely daft. Give your customers the answer without them having to ask.

The proof of the pudding

It’s tempting to brag about your achievements on your website. But instead of blowing your own trumpet too much, let your customers do the talking. Testimonials and case studies are a great way of demonstrating your credentials and proving that you are the right people to do business with. Without that third-party endorsement, you’re expecting new customers to take you on trust.

Not so smart

More and more of us are doing our searching online via our smart phones. If your site doesn’t look good on a mobile phone — and especially if it’s hard to use — you are alienating a growing number of potential customers.

Written by Rachel Miller.

Rachel Miller is the editor of Marketing Donut. The Donut websites (Law Donut, IT Donut, Tax Donut, Start Up Donut and Marketing Donut) are packed with blogs, advice, news, offers and resources for small businesses.

Writing an intelligent and well-crafted opinion piece can be an excellent way to boost credibility and establish yourself as an expert or influencer within your particular sector. The key to this is providing insight, value and consistency across all of your articles.

The first stage to formulating your article should be to discard the idea of promotion, forget for a moment your products and services. Focus on your sector and what excites you most: where do the opportunities lie; who is doing great things; what impact is the national landscape having on your business, and so on.

You will also need to make sure you are saying something different. This doesn’t mean to say you need to constantly “dare” yourself to be controversial or whacky – it means avoiding platitudes and thinking about a fresh topic and angle. This will require some research, but if you’re keeping abreast of your sector news, and the wider regional and national news picture, this will be easier.

Consider the mechanisms behind your business: the challenges, the decision making and the market climate.

Focus on depth of writing too. Look to expand on all of your points fully with supporting sources.

Do not worry at this point about word count. Chances are that uninterested readers have been lost in the first 100 words or so anyway. You want to draw the engaged readers through your article at a consistent pace, feeding them facts, insight and colour along the way.

Present competitors and cite them. This might sound counter-intuitive but it gives the piece a sound balance, making it an interesting read and not just a means of promotion.

These are some of the key tenets of any article, and certainly ones we encourage across users of Bdaily. We’re a business news provider with something of a flatter structure than traditional media. As a business or an individual, you can create a profile and post news, opinion and advice. As long as your content is balanced and interesting, it can be visible alongside staff editorial.

We’re blurring the lines between reader and contributor. Let us know what you think about the model over on our blog, where we’re talking about the business.

Written by Tom Keighley, Editor of Bdaily.

One area that is never far from business owners thinking, when discussing Cloud services, is the concerns over adoption.

When CIF asked “What concerns were expressed during the decision-making process to migrate to the Cloud?” the two stand-out answers were Data Security (82%) and Data Privacy (69%).

It is natural that some business owners look as nervous as the residents of a turkey farm in December at the thought of moving data from a physical on-premise location to a place where you no longer have access to see the server(s). The perception can be that it brings less control over security and privacy.

After these concerns the focus turns to establishing trust with the Cloud Service Provider in order to have confidence, control, reliability, and to avoid commercial issues like contract lock in. CIF state that it is worth noting that “these concerns are cited not as barriers to adoption but as issues requiring clear answers in order to contract”.

To help with this CIF have introduced a Code of Practise (CoP), the only certified Cloud CoP that exists. It is an independent benchmark of best practise that credible Cloud Service Providers should be able to measure up to and provide sufficient assurances of transparency, capability and accountability to the market. 78% of the UK companies surveyed said that they see value in working with Cloud providers who sign up to an industry CoP that is independently audited over those that have no accountability.

Fasthosts is a member of CIF and adheres to its Code of Practise.

“Organisations seeking to use cloud services need a straightforward form of certification or ‘code of practice’ for potential suppliers that will accurately define the services offered, standards of operation and security.” Andy Burton, Fasthosts CEO

Other organisations that have joined the CIF Code of Practise include DELL, Microsoft and Nominet.

With companies committing to meeting a level of Cloud service that requires them to conduct an annual Self-Certification we hope that the business owners concerns about Cloud adoption will subside.

If you are interested in discovering more about Cloud Computing we have an expert team of Technical Sales Consultants who you can call on 01452 509 177 for a free one-to-one consultation on Cloud Computing and what Cloud options could suit your business.