In its election briefing supplement The Economist outlines the four areas that the new government will need to address to kick start business growth.

• incentives – in the form of grants, co-investment or subsidies
• taxation – which can be skewed to favour investment
• education – “in favour of science, technology and manufacturing skills”
• regulation – to reduce red tape

The Economist says that the new government will need to succeed where the current administration has failed and convince the banks to start lending to business. “Business investment fell by 19% last year,” says The Economist.

Warwick Business School has identified a new category of entrepreneur, coined the necessity entrepreneur, who set up a business “because they have very few other economic options”.

(via The Week)

If you’re interested in exploring business models for the future of media head to the North East of England.

That’s the call of Rick Waghorn who has written an excellent summary of the numerous projects in the region that are exploring aspects of content creation, delivery and financial models.

“If anyone wants to know where the future of the UK’s new media landscape will be forged and decided, it’ll be in the North-East of England. […] Whether by accident or design [it is a] very interesting place to be now media-wise,” says Waghorn.

Hyper local network
Trinity Mirror has created the Your Place network of 22 hyperlocal blogs fed by local bloggers and journalists the length and breadth of Northumberland. I’m an occasional contributor to my local site in the Rothbury area

Meanwhile Josh Halliday (@JoshHalliday), an ambitious journalism student at the University of Sunderland, has launched SR2, a stylishly produced site dedicated to reporting about the SR2 postcode area of Sunderland. He is aiming to go ad funded to cover costs

Ad model
Trinity Mirror has recently opened up its Your Place project to an ad network called Addiply. It enables businesses to set up an ad campaign for a specific geographical audience for £5 per week.

Pay walls
The Northumberland Gazette is one of six weekly regionals in the Johnston Press stable that will disappear behind a paywall in a trial that starts on Monday. Will readers sign-up and pay online? I doubt it, but it will be interesting to watch.

• A corporate finance team in the middle of due diligence efforts that is tracking conversations on Twitter amongst staff and customers of a target investment
• A Westminster lobby journalist tracking blog posts and tweets from prospective MPs in a bid to spot stories and build up candidate profiles in the run up to the election
• A tech company tracking the product development efforts of a competitor by monitoring tweets by members of the product development team

The very act of socialising an organisation means individuals share their motivations and information that can be tracked and used by third parties to competitive advantage. Be warned.

[Clients] are buying outcomes. Outcomes that need to embrace a selection of skills but agencies are still trying to grab budget within the confines of their existing structures.

Brian Sollis covered similar ground when he posed a similar question to readers of his blog last week asking who owns social media?

The answer is clear, your customers and influencers own [and] define it. And, without guidance or participation, they steer the impression and perception of your brand. Social CRM is much more than engagement strategies and tactics however, it requires a completely revamped infrastructure to support effective socialized relationships management through technology and resources.

Last night I spent the evening in the company of a CEO of a management consultancy. He was excited about the prospect of using social strategies in business planning and the development of strategy.

Today Dachis acquired Headshift. Drew Benvie explained the importance of the deal in a blog post this morning:

Dachis is headed by former CEO and founder of Razorfish. It is […] using a $50m pot of money from Austin Ventures to acquire companies that fulfill on its promise “to unlock the value of social technologies for large corporate enterprises.” […]

Business consulting with a deep knowledge of social media […] is in high demand and I hope the new Dachis Headshift partnership will continue to prosper in this sector.

A new business category has evolved.

Users register to share an account.

When they Tweet using the CoTweet client it inserts a circumflex accent after each Tweet with their initials so that you can spot the author of each Tweet.

Twitter has introduced a verified account feature. The beta-feature has been introduced for anyone that has experienced identity issues and will see a badge added to the Twitter page of accounts that have been verified.

“We’re starting with well-known accounts that have had problems with impersonation or identity confusion. (For example, well-known artists, athletes, actors, public officials, and public agencies).”

If you fall into this category complete this form on the site.

Twitter could use registration as a mechanism to drive revenue. Users would be will to pay a few dollars to verify their account. But the feature is free and limited to individuals and public organisations.

“We may verify more accounts in the future, but because of the cost and time required, we’re only testing this feature with a small set of folks for the time being. As the test progresses we may be able to expand this test to more accounts over the next several months.”

While there is no plan to open up account verification for business it’s clearly something that it is considering as it has asked businesses to register their interest.

“We’re not testing this feature now with businesses. However, if you’re interested in verification for your business, fill out this feedback form and let us know.”

We’ve been just completed a piece of planning work for a prospect and spotted the issue that Econsultancy calls social media succession planning in its Online PR and Social Media Trends briefing.

It’s an issue for any organisation where an individual is the face of the company in social networks. The risk to the business is the individual building up relationships with customers and then choosing to leave the organisation.

In the sector that we’ve been researching brands are represented on Twitter either by a corporate account or an individual, or in a few instances both.

Econsultancy recommends that a branded Twitter account combined with individual Twitter representatives is best way to mitigate risk.

Who is Branded?
Branded is a brand strategy consultancy run by ex-Marketing Directors and senior agency specialists. It is run by people with real depth of experience offering real advice. We are specialists in helping organisations create or revitalise brands by developing robust, media-neutral branding and communications strategies.

Why is there a chasm between PR and marketing?
Where marketing is the dominant discipline the combined function is often overseen by a marketing professional. This means that marketing culture often prevails, and PR considered less important than it should be.

The lack of control over implementation (exactly what appears and when) can lead marketers to feel uncomfortable. Marketing is increasingly accountable, yet PR metrics are traditionally difficult to align to business strategy.

How does PR fit within the marketing mix?
PR should be close to the very centre of the marketing mix for reasons which good Marketing Directors recognise. The choice of PR channels and tone of voice should be directly influenced by the brand’s promise/story. This ‘story’ should be a persuasive source of competitive advantage that is easily delivered via these PR channels.

How can PR better engage with marketing?
Our experience suggests that PR teams are often fertile ideas generators, but too often these ideas lack a strategy. PR teams need to get involved earlier in the brand development process – they should be at the table to advise the marketers on how the brand should be crafted in order to gain maximum editorial interest – including the key brand messages and language the brand should use to maximise potential interest amongst users/audiences.

Update: Andy has updated this blog post about how to start a PR agency on a credit card.