There are those that have become international successes – the likes of Sage, ARM, Autonomy, Misys and Ultra Electronics are all strong members of the FTSE 250. But in comparison to the US, which has the NASDAQ Index predominantly made up of tech companies we obviously lag behind.

Given a flotation is the obvious alternative to a trade sale, we should be encouraging tech companies to list, gain additional investment and grow. But it currently costs over £1m to list a business on a UK stock market, where you are competing for money with a huge range of companies from around the world, many of whom are selling simpler products such as raw materials, consumer goods or property.

Rather than criticise entrepreneurs and their VC backers for ‘selling out’ it is time that listing a company in the UK was made more attractive. This would bolster the UK tech sector and create more of the leaders that we are looking for.

News-jack for business communications provider ntl:Telewest Business to target Twitter’s third birthday and an announcement by analyst house, Gartner

Approach:

• Carried out research in advance to find out how many large technology companies in the UK and the US have embraced Twitter for business communications
• Used Twitter to pre-pitch the results of the study to a few key journalists
• Pitched the story the following day to journalists and bloggers, and tweeted about the research with a link to the press release just three times
• Followed up with journalists who hadn’t covered the story the next day to flag a press release released by Gartner that morning highlight 4 ways that enterprises can use Twitter

Results:

• More than 150 clicks on the link to the press release, and three retweets
• More than 35 pieces of coverage, including two pieces in the national press
• Dozens of tweets commenting on the research, and linking to articles about it

Coverage:

Twitter’s potential overlooked by UK technology companies, says report, The Daily Telegraph
4 out of 5 UK tech companies aren’t using Twitter. So what’s the excuse?, Econsultancy
UK’s leading tech firms fail to grasp Twitter potential, Brand Republic
Enterprises turning to Twitter, says Gartner, IT Pro
Top UK firms slow on Twitter take-up, VNU Net