The team behind the start-up Secret London. Founder Tiffany is in the front row.

This isn’t an uncommon story anymore: a 21-year-old has a successful start-up.

What’s unusual, however, is the start-up was originally a Facebook group.

Tiffany Philippou started a group called Secret London in response to a competition for a summer internship with Saatchi & Saatchi. The Facebook group started as a page where Londoners could share secrets and their favorite things about the city, things only locals know about. There are also forums on the site where people can ask where to find something like live music, African drumming classes or a quirky wedding venue, and locals can respond with their opinions.

Just two weeks after starting the group, it had 182,010 fans. While the competition eventually had 800 different groups competing for the internship, Philippou now has a start-up. Internship? Old news.

With the URL bought (www.secretcities.com) and a Twitter account with 5,300 followers and blog that have both been live since early February, Secret London is blossoming. The most amazing thing about this start-up – besides the fact that it spawned from a Facebook group – was it only 2,963 pounds.

“What’s amazing is how much you can do cheaply if you are working on a project that inspires people.,” Philippou wrote in a guest blog post on TechCrunch.com. “As well as the incredible talent we got on board, we also got a printer from Freecycle.org, brought some equipment from home, and borrowed the rest. The folks at the Finsbury Centre in particular were really generous with their time and help.”

So how about that? A business can start from just about anything…including a Facebook group.

Start-up or not, every company has issues to overcome…does yours? Take our Business Health Check to find out.

Tracking progress with online marketing is easier with these tools.

After finding online marketing opportunities, like we said yesterday, you’ll need to track your “wins.” This can be a confusing and daunting thing to do, too…unless you know the tools that can track your leads for you.

Google Analytics helps yet again! It tracks referrals from the company’s social Media profiles. And twinfluence and Twitalyzer are Twitter-specific tools that measure how influential and
far-reaching the company’s Twitter presence is.

Klout tracks the impact of your posted content and links, including which audiences are exposed to the content and how they interact with it.

Translate the information about results and figure out the positive financial impact on your
business. Key performance indicators can come in various forms, like new revenue generated, a good amount of time and money saved, or a good financial return on investment.

Armed with this information, hopefully it will become clear how much social Media marketing is helping your business…or how much more you need to work at it in order to make a positive financial impact on your business! If you want to find out what needs work in your business quickly, take our Business Health Check.

Beetles have survived centuries by adapting.

It’s a new year, and if last year taught us anything, it’s to always be prepared for whatever the economy has in store, good or bad. It’s a basic law of Darwinism: adapt, or you won’t last through the winter. The survival of the fittest is precisely why some companies have gone under (resistant to change, stuck in their ways) in these times… but others haven’t.

Financial Times published an article early last year that still applies now about how surviving the recession could be compared to Darwinism and how animals that adapted to their conditions survived. The Financial Times is quick to point out in the article that “It is not the strongest species that survives, or the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change.” Know what the most adaptable being on earth is?

The beetle.

Beetles are some of the most adaptable living organisms in the world, and have survived centuries because of their talent for adapting as the times change. Companies have to sharpen their points of difference to survive.

Bears are strong, but now endangered. Eagles are smart, but now endangered. The beetle, however, is still around, due to its adaptability. It’s something for business owners to think about, especially since the recession is still very much here for many businesses. Being stubborn, resistant to change, or just plain being in denial won’t help you or your business through a recession.

How is your business doing? Fill out the Business Health Check and find out if your business has what it takes to adapt with any and every market change.