Three burgeoning entrepreneurs tell us what V-Hub has done for them, as Vodafone’s guidance service for small and medium-sized businesses marks its first anniversary.
V-Hub from Vodafone, the free online advice service for small businesses which launched in July 2020, has achieved several milestones after just one year in operation.
It has seen more than 136,000 unique visits to its knowledge base of advice, tips and best practice. And V-Hub’s expert advisers have so far supported 2,600 small and medium-sized businesses in one-to-one conversations.
Jayne Saunderson had been using Instagram to promote her one-year old photography business. Once she realised she needed a dedicated website to promote her services, she turned to V-Hub and had a one-to-one consultation.
“It was really tailored to me,” Jayne told Vodafone UK News. Practical guidance on web hosting options, tips on online security, backing up files, and search engine optimisation were some of the topics covered.
“He [the V-Hub adviser] gave me some really good tips on things that I could do, quite simple stuff, but stuff I hadn’t thought about at all,” she said.
“I think the big thing about running your own small business is you don’t know what you don’t know.”
Credits: Jayne Saunderson
Jayne also liked that fact her consultant promised to review her progress in a month’s time.
“So there’s a bit of accountability there as well,” she said.
Chef and budding restaurateur Danny Jack appreciated the “dynamic analysis” of his business from the V-Hub team and receiving some “sage advice from street food entrepreneur Petra Barran” in a one-to-one mentorship session.
“Having the support of the V-Hub team has given me the confidence to reach outside of my networks to tell the story of who I am and where I want to get to,” said Danny.
Other small businesses have benefited from the broad range of guidance offered by the V-Hub team. For example, Sarah Barber, co-founder of Staffordshire-based cake shop Scrumbles, said the team “helped us with our website and our social media”.
“Our business is now a lot more heavily reliant on social media and our e-commerce site so the help from Vodafone is absolutely vital.”
Both Danny Jack and Scrumbles were also beneficiaries of the Shout Out for Small Businesses campaign, one of Vodafone’s other initiatives to help budding entrepreneurs.
The most popular articles on V-Hub’s knowledge base so far cover essential topics such as cybersecurity, remote working and building an online presence.
As Jayne Saunderson says: “It’s an amazing service for small businesses”.
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