As anyone with a lapsed gym membership knows, New Year’s Resolutions have a tendency to, well, not show much resolve. So we thought we’d make blur Group‘s resolutions not easy, but eminently achievable by ourselves and by other businesses who want to ensure that 2011 is an exciting and successful year. Let’s go!

1) Engagement will be our goal at all points. We’ve all got quite good at the use of social media. Now we have to make it two-way. At blur Group our provision of a marketplace for those providing creative talent (our Crowdies) and those requiring it (our customers with briefs, or Briefers as we’re fondly referring to them) means that we have a major challenge to engage with both these communities so that both sets come back for more. It’s not dissimilar from most businesses who have an external customer audience and internal staff community, so if we’re going to aim high and make sure that all our activities lead to maximum engagement, then why not join in with this goal?  Social Media is amongst many other things, hugely visible, so it’s quite easy to monitor how engaging businesses are. Too many tweets that tell, not enough that ask; too many Facebook pages with more corporate messages than customer chat.  Watch out for these, and if you’re doing them, think how to change.  Feel free to tell us when we’re more in educate than engage mode too. If 2010 saw the (ill-fated) Capello index, let’s look to seeing the blur Group engagement index in 2011 (and nothing about Wills and Kate, but lots about great interactions, content, collaboration and community).

2)Efficiency. Our next resolution is to couple this great engagement with maximum efficiency and effectiveness. We make no secret of the fact that we are challenging traditional ad agencies and see our Crowdsourced marketplace as being the future of advertising. This means that we need to introduce great new techniques that make the whole process of developing and delivering creative projects more streamlined, more rapid, more cost-effective. Everyone who’s dealt with us knows that our business is Cloud-based and Crowd-based, so we intend to build more on this in 2011 and take the world of advertising by storm through unmatched marketing, technology and social media leadership. How can you join in on this? If you’re not already taking your business to the Cloud, think seriously now, before you lose ground to your rivals. Don’t use security and control as excuses: your employees are more likely to leave a laptop in the pub than lose data in the Cloud.

3)Entertainment. Everyone should take their business seriously. We’re no exception at blur Group. But what we should embrace is the desire that our interactions with our Crowds and Customers is not just engaging, but entertaining.  Looking at the tweets of the year they share common elements of entertainment, intrigue and amusement. They also reflect the personality – and as we move into 2011 let’s make sure that we take off brand straitjackets and allow personality of the individual and the entire enterprise to shine through. We want our communications with you, through our blogs, through our other social media and online channels, as well as our face to face dealings to always be interesting and informative, entertaining and unique. It’s a pretty good resolution for anyone trying out new marketing and communication channels and it’s one that should make the task easier rather than tougher.

There, some resolutions from us, that we intend to keep and hope that you can learn from too! Happy New Year: may it be challenging for all the right reasons, successful and Crowded with good things!