It’s called The Five Two Diet and it’s popular partly because of its simplicity.

5 days a week: eat what you like.

2 days a week: eat no more than 500 calories.

I won’t be trying it but the woman on the radio said she had, and found it very difficult.

Here’s my suggestion.

7 days a week: eat a bit less than the recommended daily calories for a man or woman, depending on what you are. Avoid stuff that’s high in fat, cholesterol or sugar. Don’t add salt. Try and get 5 bits of fruit in there each day. Avoid alcohol.

Got to go. The pious police are at the door.

You’re looking at the reality for small business owners.

You need to get noticed.

But how do you stand out?

A bigger flyer? A bolder business card? Engaging text? A sexy picture? An amazing special offer?

You could cheat. Think outside the box and create a space by removing someone else’s advert.

You could.

But you shouldn’t.

You shouldn’t bother at all. Because a flyer or business card in the newsagent’s window means you’re still relying on the right person stopping what they’re doing to read them all, notice yours, remember your details and give you work.

There’s more to life.

Be a better business. Do a good job. Connect with the right potential customers before they even get to the newsagent’s window.

How to do that? 

There are many ways, Facebook is one. 

Existing customers ‘LIKE’ your page. When they do, their Facebook friends receive a message in their news feed telling them their friend just ‘LIKED’ your page. Some of them will ‘LIKE’ your page too.

They then receive the status updates your business posts.

Think about what you can give them. Share news, pictures, explain the products and services you offer and the benefits you bring.

Inform, entertain, engage. Share something that gets their day off to a nice start while they lie in bed and browse Facebook on their mobile phone, before they even brush their teeth let alone make it to the newsagent’s window.

The group of small business owners in the room with us were shocked that a throwaway bit of nonsense, or cheek, or a misplaced attempt at humour, could have such serious repercusions.

Anyone found guilty of defamation, or libel, in court faces paying damages to the injured party and all associated legal costs.

Perhaps Bercow will appeal. One day, maybe the law will catch up. Should throwaway Tweets and Facebook status updates, random bits of chat, be treated as seriously as national newspaper headlines?

That’s a much wider debate.

Today, the consequences for misplaced humour on social networks are severe. For small business owners they could be catastrophic.

All our social media training sessions include an element dealing with ‘Social Media and The Law’. Not because we think the business owners themselves are going to say something libellous. But because their staff might. And we want to empower them to protect their staff and learn valuable lessons from other people’s mistakes.

‘The Social Network’ is well worth a watch, even my Dad liked it.

But he doesn’t like the network itself, or Zuckerberg.

‘Facebook was created FOR people that couldn’t get a girlfriend, BY people that couldn’t get a girlfriend’ was his frank assessment.

I think Zuckerberg is a great visionary. He recognised, long before anyone else, that people would no longer care about their privacy.

He knew, when others doubted, that a huge section of society would deliberately want everyone else to know what they were doing and where they were at any particular point.

He created a platform and used data to change it. He hadn’t forseen the emphasis on sharing images, but quickly put that centre stage.

His work ethic is frightening, he’s clearly got great coding ability, a ruthless streak and seeks out partners and builds a great team, but above all, it’s the vision that got him where he is today.

He saw where society was going. Then built something to take it there, lighting fast.

A good idea and I’m sure his fans will appreciate it. If he does it well, and I’m sure he will, he’s bound to pick up new fans too.

Some people think YouTube is about posting videos.

It’s not. It’s about community. The comments and discussion around each video are every bit as important as the videos themselves.

Kevin knows this because he’s used to interacting with audiences. It’s what he does and his ability to do that is a big part of his success.

So why do some of our political parties get it wrong?

This is an important time for Scotland with the referendum debate rumbling on. I don’t have strong views either way and won’t be expressing them here. My job is to look at how all sides communicate.

And today, I’m calling out Scottish Labour for doing YouTube wrong.

Look at this video.

Margaret Curran is regarded as one of their best talents. Leadership material in Scotland if she fancied it. The Shadow Scottish Secretary. Experienced, comes across well, someone they put up all the time for broadcast interviews and panel discussions.

So why are they putting this video out which shows her in a dimly lit environment, looking uncomfortable and sounding like she’s in the bin? It wouldn’t have taken much to do this properly, fit her up with a proper tie mic and sort out the lighting.

But worse than the aesthetics, everything she says is negative starting with the title. My mate Derek once hosted a 4 hour radio show in the run up to the 2001 General Election where he interviewed all the candidates for a particular seat and explicitly banned them from saying anything negative about each other. They could only talk about what THEY were going to do. And anytime they started criticising another party he jumped in and talked right over the top of them. They hated it! But listeners loved it.

And not only have Scottish Labour put up a poor quality, negative video they’ve also banned anyone from commenting.

That’s not social at all. And I don’t believe for a minute it’s what Margaret Curran and her colleagues would have wanted. The whole reason they got into politics was because they enjoyed debates. What’s happening here is some PR or ‘comms’ type that doesn’t really ‘get it’ is trying to keep things running smoothly by banning any discussion around the video.

I really hope they’ll change their mind. It’s a debate. And here in 21st Century Scotland we are perfectly capable of having a good, well mannered, interesting debate. And that video, poor quality though it is, should be part of it.

Now, before you think I’m picking on Scottish Labour let me stress: they are by no means alone in ‘doing it wrong’.

I’ll get to the others in a bit. And if you see examples of politicians giving less than their best, I hope you’ll let me know.

In spring 1993 I was about to turn 15. I owned a nice collection of Bermuda shorts and had just started helping out every Wednesday evening at the hospital radio station. Competitive swimming and countless hours of training had been a huge part of my life up till then but it was on the way out and being replaced by radio.

I’d loved listening to the radio for years and had made up tapes of me pretending to be a DJ but since I’d joined the hospital radio station (Hairmyres in East Kilbride) I got a taste of what I considered ‘proper’ broadcasting.

This place had professional equipment. 2 studios. Staff. Almost every record and CD you could think of. And best of all – listeners. OK, it was a captive audience who only tuned in because there really was nothing better to do but it beat just giving yet another tape to my Dad to listen to on his way to work. I’d felt for a while he must be tiring of hearing my shows every day and since I knew his journey to work was at least 40 minutes why was it now taking him more than a week to listen to a 90 minute programme?

May 16th 1993 would have been just about my 1st or 2nd week as a volunteer at the hospital radio and I think I’d got as far as being allowed to read out the bingo numbers. Having my own show was a distant dream. I didn’t know it at the time but it wasn’t that far away. By the end of June I’d be hosting my own Friday night 60s show.

I still remember how it started. The news came to an end and I hit the button to play my first jingle.

‘You’re listening to Radio Hairmyres!’ it boomed with some pumping music underneath.

You’d think that would have set things up nicely for me to slam straight in to one of the biggest hits from a decade full of big hits.

But not me. Not on my first show. Oh no. I wanted to make an impact. And much as I loved music, I knew it was what a presenter said instead of just what they played that made them stand out.

So the jingle came to an end and rather than playing a record straight away, I opened the mic.

What did I say? What were my first words, on my first programme on anything remotely resembling a ‘proper’ radio station?

‘That’s right, you’re listening to Radio Hairmyres’.

Brilliant. The jingle’s just told them what they’re listening to and I’ve just gone and said it again. Just in case they missed it.

We’re less than 10 seconds into the programme and I’m already repeating myself.

By 7pm I’d told the audience I hoped my programme was ‘getting them in a good mood for the weekend’ (tough luck if you’re stuck in hospital) and introduced ‘Strangers In The Night with the unmistakable voice of Frank Sinatra’ and then played an entire instrumental version of the song.

I’m not sure how much preparation I’d actually done but it wasn’t nearly enough because with one CD player in the studio half the songs I was playing had to come off vinyl. And when ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely’ starting to bounce I was on full-scale panic mode.

I had nothing to say. And nothing lined up to take its place. So I let it bounce. For ages.

I had the tape until a few years back and it’s more than a minute.

‘You talk like..vvvp..You talk like..vvvp…You talk like..vvvp..You talk like vvvp…’ on and on and on and on. For more than a minute until I managed to unscramble my head and get Thunderclap Newman on.

Sometimes all that seems a long time ago but overall I think it’s flown by. Radio’s changed beyond all recognition. Hairmyres Hospital has been knocked down and re-built and I’ve had highly enjoyable careers in journalism, presenting and now training and consultancy.

I’ll be 35 in a few weeks and if you’d told me when I was 15 this is how it would have all turned out I’d have been very excited about it all.

It’s not exactly a smooth, easy to follow career trajectory and I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way, but I’ve enjoyed almost every moment of it.

‘I don’t have time’

‘I don’t use Facebook’

‘I don’t want people knowing what I’m doing all the time, it’s creepy’

‘Twitter’s full of rubbish’

‘I’m worried people will say nasty stuff’

‘Our company bans Twitter and Facebook, we can’t access them’.

All of these reasons are perfectly valid and I would never try to change your mind about using social networks in a personal capacity. If that’s what you think and you don’t want to use them, no problem.

But it misses the point.

Because whether your business embraces social networks or not, your customers most definitely are. Which ones vary depending on the sector you’re in. Some businesses do a lot through Facebook while others, myself included, get very little but get great results from Linkedin and Twitter.

Don’t confuse ‘personal’ use of social networks from ‘business’ use. Our training is about using them purely for business benefits. To achieve objectives. And we recognise you don’t have time and might have bosses who are resistant to the whole idea.

Any time you spend using Facebook or Twitter in the office has to be in addition to the time you spend doing other stuff. We understand this and a big part of our training is about using them effectively, to achieve your business objectives in as little time as possible.

We will stress though, social networking isn’t a short cut. You probably won’t sign up today and have orders pouring in by Friday. Although there was a guy in a session we ran last Tuesday who followed our advice and arranged a meeting with 2 potential customers before we’d even finished the workshop!

‘What happens if people say nasty stuff’ is another issue. And it does happen. But it’s going to happen whether your business embraces social networks or not. At least if you’re there you’ve got a chance to get your story out. The true story. The customer isn’t always right! how to handle criticism fair and unfair, is another area we spend a bit of time on in our workshops.

Our next social networking for business masterclass is on Friday 24th May at Hillington Park Innovation Centre, G52 4RU. There’s easy parking, you’ll get lunch, tea/coffee etc and the chance to chat with other business people. You can sign up here if you’re interested and if you’re currently resistant to the whole idea of social networking I hope you’ll consider coming along.

I won’t make any promises or give you any hype. In fact, I’m well aware it can be hard sometimes to measure the return social networking brings businesses. All I can say is we’ve been running these sessions for almost 3 years and have a 100% record on our feedback forms of participants saying they consider our course value for money and that they’d recommend it to a friend.

Or you can get noticed.

Never try to do the two at the same time.

We deliberately turn away from people in ‘selling mode’.

And if we try to ‘disguise’ the fact we’ve got something to sell we either disguise it very badly and come across as a charlatan, or we sell half heartedly and wonder why we wasted our time.

You have to have pure intentions.

Create because you enjoy creating.

Trust that good things will follow.

The first iPod wasn’t all that great. It wasn’t developed as a device that would change the world. It was someone dabbling, trying things out, wondering what could be done. An experiment with pure intentions.

It worked and Steve Jobs and his team realised there were onto something. The first iPod was refined and improved and subsequent models conquered the world. But not as much as the iPhone did.

So the goal was not to make millions, the goal was to make something cool and see what happened. Once it had been noticed, once the masses decided it was something they wanted, that’s when the ‘machine’ swung into action and the money got made.

Same with Google. It was a university project. A game to see if something not very good could be made a bit better. No thought whatsoever, for years, about how to make money.

Same with Facebook.

You have to have the courage to put something out and see what happens. If it’s decent, good things will follow.

They might not be the things you’d expect. But there’ll be something good.

Google got noticed because they didn’t try to sell. Rewind to 1998 and imagine that beautiful homepage with all that white space around the search box. Imagine if you had to enter your email address before you got the results. Imagine if you had to enter your credit card details to activate your free trial.

Google wouldn’t be here today.

Once you’re noticed you have the right to sell.

And you should sell with no apologies. Sell like there’s no tomorrow. Don’t soft sell, or hard sell, just sell to the people who want to buy, the way that comes naturally to you.

That’s it. You can do it.

Follow the golden rules and this could be you!

Right?

Wrong.

Because the business I’ve been reading about sells gluten free rolls.

And I’m guessing you don’t.

If you’re in the service industry, if YOU’RE the product then unless you’re the next JK Rowling, Innocent Smoothies, Mike Ashley or Howard Stern you’ll never make that kind of money.

You’re in the wrong job.

And if you ARE the next JK Rowling, Innocent Smoothies or whoever then you’re so busy honing your craft you don’t have time to read this.

So what do you need to know?

Simply that the articles that fill up Linkedin telling you how to ‘think differently’ and explaining how you should follow some ‘golden rules from great leaders’ are nothing more than the business equivalent of a soap opera.

Sit in front of them for a bit, get a nice warm glow and then go back to mediocrity.

Go back to wondering why she’s up there and you’re down here.

She’s up there because she took risks. Because she made money – serious money – and put a team together. She recruited staff, bought factories and did deals. She launched a business that very quickly became scalable, it didn’t rely – long term – on her slaving away spending every single moment of her life baking bread.

I meet lots of business owners who think there’s a secret to turning their business into an empire. A shortcut.

There isn’t. In most cases, you simply can’t. You could give up every hobby and interest you have, ignore your friends and shun your family, you’d still only have 24 hours in a day. You’d still need to pay for a roof over your head and you’d still need food to eat.

Even the best blog post or article on Linkedin can’t change the basic facts of life.

Don’t fall for the lies and the spam.

If you’re standing on the high street selling gas lighters two for a pound then there’s a severe limit on what you’re going to have to spend at the end of the day, even if you work like a demon and don’t stop for lunch.

Want you take your business to the next level? I’m willing to bet you already know what to do.

It’s that thing you’ve been putting off for ages. That little, boring thing that won’t make you feel good, won’t make you any extra money today and you’ll probably hate doing it.

That’s why you’ve been putting it off for so long.

It’s a baby step.

But that’s what you’ve got to do. It’s the only thing you can do now to give your business any hope of making progress. It won’t make you anywhere near 50 million pounds. But it’ll take you a tiny bit closer to where you want to be. A tiny bit. Which is closer than you’ll be if you keep putting it off and go back to reading the trash that fills your Linkedin feed.

Do it. And good luck.

I’ve been working on this for the last few months and it’s nearly time to hit the ‘publish’ button.

‘Get Your Business Noticed – 100 Digital Marketing Ideas’ was developed after a talk I gave at a business event organised by North Ayrshire Council. I wanted to break away from the ‘theory’ and see how many practical steps I could deliver that business owners would be able to follow and implement immediately to start seeing a difference and get their business noticed.

What made it really interesting was I only had 45 minutes to speak! Could I really fit in all 100 tips in such a short time?

I started putting it all together and realised the limited time was forcing me to explain things really clearly. No time or space for jargon. And since I had to stand in front of a live audience and go through each one I knew only the very best ideas and advice could make the cut. Anything too outlandish or impractical and they’d heckle me!

I’ve wanted to write a book ever since I was a child (my first short story got rejected by the BBC when I was 6 years old. They told me ‘we’re very busy and will be for the considerable future and probably a long time after that’.) I took the hint but I like to think my writing has improved since then.

To double check, I sent copies to a couple of people I admire and they’ve been kind enough to respond with the testimonials you can read below. If you’d like to buy the book it’s launched in paperback in early June, you can buy it as a Kindle download here but since you’re reading my blog, you can download your own free copy right now.

TV presenter Jenni Falconer: 
‘Get Your Business Noticed is a seriously handy, gem of a book and it benefits, not just businesses, but all of us who have a presence on social media. Nowadays, awareness plays a key role in the success of a business and by following Colin’s helpful ‘how to’ guide, there is no doubt that your online profile will be boosted. The internet is a wonderful place with lots to offer but we can also exploit it for our needs. With an understanding of the science behind social media, Colin has created some top tips which I will definitely be taking on board and applying to my own website, Twitter and Facebook accounts.’

Radio advertising guru Dan O’Day
I’ve seen lots of books about digital marketing from “experts” who really don’t know what they’re talking about, or who are pretending to educate the reader while not-so-secretly trying to sell something.

Colin Kelly’s GET YOUR BUSINESS NOTICED is a welcome departure from the norm: 100 actionable, real-world ideas that any business can apply immediately.
I recommend to any business owner who wants to profit from the ever growing opportunities presented by social media.’