PeerReach is a pretty cool tool you can use to understand your Twitter following by peer group, quality, country etc.. and also it allows you to dee the most influential people who are following you by ‘Rank’ so you can follow them back. I have to say its a pretty useful tool,  somewhat bringing order out of chaos given that anyone can follow anyone on social media today, so you really end up not knowing the make up of that following , who your content resonates with and what following / influence they in turn have. The chart below is a breakdown of my following by PeerReach’s quality metric.

TIP to team @ PeerReach: you should have an export widget, i had to take a screengrab and paste this here, as social media frieks you should know better folks ;) 

I wrote this piece recently in a column i contribute to for the Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/xenios-thrasyvoulou/the-new-wave-of-british-exports_b_3178711.html

In the past year we’ve seen the amount of time UK freelancers are selling their services to companies abroad (and in particular to far Eastern countries) more than double on PeoplePerHour. You’d think that these are specialist services from the upper echelons of our labour force. But they are not. They are skills that the average middle class Brit has, thanks largely to our education system. Skills like writing good English copy, organizational task, helping a small business to basic math or data management, voiceovers, and some more specialised skills like design and technical development work

These services ‘exported’ to the fledgling SMB sector in less developed countries is a reflection of a basic macro-economic principle: what’s in abundance in some countries is scarce in others. The Western economies like the UK may have some of the most sophisticated medical systems, militaries and - once although dwindling - manufacturing infrastructures. What is often overlooked, is that we also have is a middle class that’s more educated than most economies across the world. The middle class is what emerging economies are in need of the most in order to trickle down their new-found wealth to small and medium sized businesses - which, lo and behold, become the backbone of a developed economy.

It’s not until a middle class emerges that an economy can become truly ‘developed’ with efficient distribution of income. But that takes decades, it takes a sound education system that enables not just the wealthier families to send their kids to; it requires a welfare system to develop and a culture shift from large state owned industries to a culture of entrepreneurialism.

To accelerate the process these economies are turning online. What the McKinseys of this world have been able to deliver to the top industrialists first, the SMBs are turning to labour in the crowd for. And they pay a premium for it (albeit not exactly the draconian fees of the McKinsey and other Western globalizes agencies)

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Lately I’ve had the luck to be approached by a number of startup entrepreneurs wanting to get some insight or advice from my learnings at PeoplePerHour.  The first thing I always say is my no 1 learning myself : listen to advice, but don’t be afraid to act differently. Advisors will be wrong more often that great entrepreneurs as they know their business better than any other. So always take it with a pinch of salt. Same applies here.

That said, there are a few basics which I do believe are very transferrable across most businesses and especially online, regardless of the sector. And its these basics that I see missing more of then than not. Entrepreneurs can often be victims of what makes them entrepreneurs – passion, vision, and hunger. They are impatient by nature and they jump in.

Below are what I think the most important things to think through before  you even start, and in this order. 

1.  Figure out your unit economics first

This is probably the most important starting point for me. Often neglected. Don’t just jump in to a business with wishful thinking check the unit economics to make sure you can acquire customers profitably and scale.

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This article eloquently describes how the Eurobanks played Cyprus knowing what was coming well ahead of the 1 week notice given to the President. Granted the Cyprus politicians - and more so i would say the leaders of the troubled banks - should have no doubt acted faster seeing their deposits shrink in particular withdrawals from the Eurobanks which are the more sophisticated investors and the highest dependency to banking stability. But the fact doesn’t change, Eurobanks played Cyprus and our ignorant leaders to maximise profit and generated ‘free money’ as the article puts it. They are the clear winners of the situation. The losers: Cypriot depositors.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr13/Cyprus-template4-13.html

I recently wrote a guest post for Huffington Post which i’d like to share with you : http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/xenios-thrasyvoulou/globalisation-of-the-cottage-industry_b_2963766.html