Oli Gibson

As the title suggests I’m taking today off and not writing anything significant. Hope you don’t mind. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Hey guys, Thursday’s are my busy day at uni and today’s been no exception, it’s almost like having a proper job and working the 9-5 (heaven forbid). So I spent most of the day in lectures today along with finding an hour or so to do a little gym session. Not really that exciting.

Today I thought I’d share with you a list of some of the blogs I try and read regularly or semi regularly. Here are my top 10 blogs for entrepreneurs, small business owners and generally anyone interested in business.

Gary Vaynerchuk – This is a great blog by Gary who shares his business ideas and principles for success on the internet using his marketing techniques. Amazing what a quick flip cam video can do!

Business Pundit – What I like about this blog is it’s really all about business. You won’t find too many “tips, tricks, and how-to’s” here, just good old fashion business reporting. Great information on big business brands in a way that gives you an “insiders” look into their success.

Seth’s Blog – Seth Godin is the entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. Seriously, if you want to learn from one of the most informative businessmen, you’ll love his witty, educational, and brief blog posts. Nuff said!

Duct Tape Marketing Blog – This is by far one of my most favorite blogs. A lot of the links I share on Twitter come from John Jantsch’s blog. He has truly built a wealth of practical marketing information, social media tips, and business advice all in one spot.

CopyBlogger – If you’re a blogger this site is a great spot for practical information and help to increase your readership, traffic, and become an overall better blogger. If you’re looking for information on making money with your blog then visit . . .

ProBlogger – Darren Rowse really puts a lot into delivering solid content for his readers and it really shows. You’ll find great articles on ways to create a profitable blog, increasing reader engagement, best practices, and more. You might even like my guest post there; 3 Money-Making Magazine Strategies for Blogging Success

Success Factors – This is a blog by my good friend, Steve Borgman. I really enjoy his articles on success, branding, and even metrics for measuring your success. How cool is that? You’ll find a wealth of valuable information, inspiration, and empowerment from Steve’s posts.

Young Entrepreneur Blog – Another one of my favorite blogs! I love their interviews, social media tips, and articles on entrepreneurship and leadership. I’m not going to say anything else about this blog other than subscribe to it now!

Small Business Trends – SBT is by far one of the greatest blogs for entrepreneurs I’ve come across in a long time. Pod casts, white papers, marketing tips, social media advice, blogging advice, it’s all there for mass consumption. There’s always something new to read and share. It really does have it all and they do a good job of delivering all their content. Check it out!

Chris Brogan.com – If you’re an entrepreneur and you want to learn how to maximize social media, Chris’s blog is the place to learn from a master. If Bill Gates started a blog about making money, would you read it? Of course you would! Same thing here with this blog, it’s an excellent resource for maximizing social media [business wise] in a way that really earns your customer’s trust. You might even check out Chris’s excellent new book; Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust.

Worth checking out at least a couple of these if not all of them at some point. Hope you like the post today. Speak soon guys.

Hi Guys, I’m keeping it short because I have a lot going on today. It’s late and I really need to get some shut eye before another busy day tomorrow.

It’s amazing how motivating it is to meet other business people as I did yesterday, it pushes you on. It’s certainly motivated me. Unfortunately it seems that university wants all my attention for today as well it’s time for me to play catch up. I have spent much of my life playing a balancing act between education and *several other things*, sport, business etc and today its really winding me up. To be able to focus on developing R16 Media would make me so happy but it seems I must play this balancing act.

A bit of a rant but I think that it will apply through everyones life no matter what, be it sport, family life or just the need to have time for yourself balancing your time is essential. The balancing acts I’ve tried to pull off over the years have been pretty crazy and sometimes haven’t worked but 95% of the time with careful planning they can work out. But remember don’t take on too many tasks thats what will kill you.

A rant with maybe a little advice in it, have a search and you might find it!

Let me start this post with a huge thank you to the team at Shell Livewire and everyone at Shell UK for making this event possible. It is immensly valuable for business people and entrepreneurs to meet face to face as well as over the Internet so this event was invaluable in my opinion.

Secondly I’d like to say congratulations to Robert and his team at Shiply who won the young entrepreneur of the year award. I know there has been debate here about Shiply but I believe it is a great product and having met Robert today I can testify he is a nice guy too. Also a big congratulations to the othe seven nominees it was nice to put names to faces today.

The Shell livewire event concisted of a lot of networking, which at the end of the day is probably the most valuable for start up businesses. However there were a number of other things going on. First off there was a panal discusion hosted by Tre Azam from the 2007 series of the Apprentice. This was a general discusion on taking your business to the next level and it was really good to hear how people who have been successful in their business career arn’t much different from anyone else. As one panalists said ‘entrepreneurs develop. They are not born’.

Following this we had a number of smaller group sessions. I attended a talk on accessing finance from angel investors to bank loans and a number of methods inbetween. I also attended a talk on branding and how it can help your company. These small discussions developed an amazing amount of leads and ideas.

Finally we all had a short session on developing an elevator pitch and then went to watch the eight finalists do just that in their short and sweet presentations before the announcement of the winner, Shiply.

I’d like to say thanks again to everyone who made the event possible and I look forward to next year!

Hey guys, today I went on the internet, like most days actually and I found this.

As a ‘once every now and then golfer’ I don’t expect I’ll be able to pull off anything like this soon. But you have to be amazed by this. Spent most of today working on the R16 Media marketing plans and the new website. Also managed to get in the gym, just to let you know I’m still keeping it up!

I’m off to Shell Livewire live tomorrow in London. So I’ll have a longer post about that tomorrow and I’ll be keeping you all up to date on Twitter through out the day (@oligibson if, heaven only knows why, your not already following me)

Ciao for now!