Electric Scotland Blog

I thought it might be interesting to focus on Scottish Business to see if there is anything we might do to help promote them.

My problem is that I have not been able to really discuss things to see how I might help. For example Jim Mather MSP provided email addresses for the top people in Scotland to do with business and enterprise.

I emailed everyone but only got a reply from the Scottish Chamber of Commerce. I replied to that one but never got a reply back. I then thought I'd phone but she was busy and so I left a message. I did say that I was in Canada and asked if she would return my call in Canada and was assured she would.

Well no return call so I called again and again she was busy so I again left a message. You guessed it... no return call.

My site gets more visitors that any newspaper or magazine in Scotland gets in circulation so are in a position to make a difference when it comes to promoting Scottish business at both home and abroad.

I have to ask the question... what is the matter with business people in Scotland?

Yes we are in a global recession and all you hear in Scotland today is that we must look to cutting costs. There is no suggestion that we might actually sell ourselves out of recession.

Talking to many Scots outside Scotland we are all convinced that there are billions to be made in exports. I note Billions! Why then is the SDI so enthusiastic about getting 300 million. Now if that had been 3 billion I would have applauded their efforts.

My complaint is that Scottish business people seem incapable of looking to the wider world for business expansion. And the few businesses that do simply won't talk about their success. This leave us with the result that Scotland the Brand got in their International survey that Scotland doesn't have much of a business infrastructure.

Are we asking for money? No.

We are offering to provide good publicity in exchange for getting some decent information on Scottish companies. All this takes is a little time and effort. It's clear that our top business people are lazy and couldn't care less or they have totally failed to understand how the web has transformed the way we do business. In either case it's just unacceptable that these people should be in the positions they are.

I would call for a complete overhaul of Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Chamber of Commerce and others to bring in new people to head them up and also head up the various departments within them.

Also too many organisations such as Global Scots, etc are simply not being forthcoming as to what they do or achieve. There is to my mind a Secret Scotland where far too many groups will not share information. All this does is hamper the perception of how Scottish business is doing and as we learn nothing we are left to assume they are all too ashamed about there lack of progress that they don't want to reveal this.

I say to them all... share information with any business that can give decent publicity to Scottish business. Having your own web site is just an excuse for not doing more.

They seem to think by having their own web site they don't need to do any more. That in my mind is sheer stupidity. What does it matter where people read about Scottish business as long as people will read it.

And visitor traffic figures are often very misleading. You can configure a server in such a way as to report more visitors than you actually get.

And how many of your visitors are real visitors. You'd be surprised at how many visitors are taken up by your own staff or members just checking their details. So how many real visitors are you actually getting that are seeking to do business?

And so you might say this is a rant and it probably is but it would be interesting to see what others think and see if we can spot trends that are holding us back.