Electric Scotland is a history site and thus we're interested in the history of Scottish owned businesses. In exchange for a free listing in here all we ask is that you provide us with some history on your own company.  This means we want to know when you started business, who started it, what was your vision for the business and how have you progressed to the current day giving us some interesting highlights on the way.

Please note that this directory is for Scottish owned businesses but we are also happy to list non Scottish businesses that have operations in Scotland. For this reason we have a specific category "Overseas Companies located in Scotland" as those companies are also part of Scotland's history. Where you are a foreign owned business you should list your company under this category as well as any others you select.

In some respects this gives you the opportunity to do a "sales pitch".  We are looking for at least 5,000 words but could be 20,000 words or more and we will accept pictures and video. There is no practical limit on how much information you can send us.

From an International point of view Scotland is seen as having little in the way of business infrastructure and we want to use this directory to refute this understanding and build a body of work that will clearly show how vibrant Scottish businesses are.

Electric Scotland was born out of Almac BBS which was the largest Bulletin Board System in Europe and 5th largest in the world.  The demise of the BBS's due to the web led me to build this web site from my base in Grangemouth, Scotland in 1997.  It is now the largest Scottish history site and a great research and educational site. We're a content site meaning that to learn a lot about the history of Scotland, the Scots and people and places of Scots descent you need go no further than our site. We do not rely on web links to provide you with the information.

I moved to the USA and formed a new company called Electric Scotland USA LLC and this is still the company we operate with. I later moved to Canada where I now reside and so all content is added from here.

We get around 1.2 million page views each month and millions of unique visitors annually. Our reach is world wide but some 20% of our visitors do come from the UK with another 55% from North America.

All this means that we are the new weekly magazine as the demise of print Newspapers and Magazines means that people now turn to the web to get their information.  In a survey we did where we got some 1,253 completed questionnaires some 35% of respondents said they came to the site daily and 85% said they came at least weekly. As we add content each and every day there is always something new to read.

When you are ready to add your own entry to the Scottish Business Directory on Electric Scotland you need to provide...

1. Your contact details.  This would include your contact name, email address and your web site address.  Along with this we will also require your company address and telephone and fax numbers.

2. Your company information.  Frankly, if you are enthusiastic about your own company then you should enjoy telling us all about it.  We also want our visitors to enjoy reading about you.  All this means is that we want the story of your company from its beginnings to what you are doing today. We'd like to learn how you got to where you are today.  Send us five paragraphs and you won't get a listing. We want a detailed and comprehensive account. You might say that this is how you pay to get your listing on our site and in this Business directory.

3. Media.  We're more than happy to receive as many pictures as you want to send us.  Perhaps some pictures of the owner and staff. Pictures of your business and products. Perhaps pictures of clients. We are also willing to accept videos and if you have a video on YouTube then send us the url and we'll embed it into your entry. You can also send us adobe reader files if you wish or word documents.

4. Where will you be listed?  Take your time going through our directory categories. By default we're prepared to list you under up to 5 categories.  This doesn't mean you have to select 5 categories but we do understand that some companies will cover multiple services. We ask that you also select the Council Area you are located in and in the case of foreign owned companies please also add yourself to the "Overseas Companies located in Scotland". And so you could actually have up to 7 listings.

5. Search. As we build the Directory we will be adding a dedicated search engine that will only search this directory. At the same time our own Site Search engine will also pick up your page and so anyone using that will also find you depending on their search words. As we get spidered by all the large search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, that should also help your own rankings.

6. Social networking.  We launched our Electric Scotland Community on Canada Day (1st July 2010) We have already created a Business forum but we can greatly expand on this should there be sufficient interest. We would also encourage you to add your web site to our Links directory at http://www.electricscotland.org/links/index.php

7. Bloggs and RSS Feeds. These are available through our social networking site and if you use them we can also link to them from your entry.

8. Layout.  Our layout on the site will fit with our general look and feel of our own site. This means we use Arial 10pt and usually justify the text.  Where we receive hi-res pictures we will normally thumbnail them down to either 294 or 500 pixels.  If you wish to send us your company logo we'll display that at the top of the page.  We intend to offer up to 3 lines of text as a summary entry on the index page of the categories you select. Your company name will be linked to your page with the information you send to us. You can provide the 3 line description you'd like to see.  I should also add that most of our own web pages are entire chapters of a book. You will thus receive one web page for your entry.

8. Flexibility. To build a resource like this means we need to be flexible and so if we can improve the system we will.  This also means we are happy to listen to you should you want to suggest new categories or have other suggestions that would make this system more useful.

9. Updates.  When you have your entry in our Business Directory you can update it at any time by simply emailing us the new information.  Should you want this new information added in a certain place simply quote the before and after paragraphs in your email and we'll insert the new information at that point.

And so now that you know what we expect and what you will get it just remains for you to get your information together and email it to us. Send it to Alastair McIntyre and I look forward to receiving it.

I will usually have your page up on the day I receive it but at least within a week of receiving it.  I will email you back when your entry is on the site so if you don't hear from me within a week then feel free to contact me again.  I regret that these days emails are not as reliable as they should be and so your email might have got caught in our spam system which is why you need to contact me again and I can also supply another email address to try. You can get our phone numbers and snail mail address details on our Contact Us page

We look forward to telling the world about Scottish businesses and hope you'll become part of this story. We have arranged to have our site left to one of Canada's greatest Universities so that information on here will be available to future generations. Should we be successful in our efforts to tell the story of Scottish business then it should certainly benefit your company and Scottish business as a whole. We already deliver some $21 million in new tourism revenue each year to Scotland and we look forward to being even more successful for Scottish businesses across all business areas. We see billions in new business for Scotland if we should be able to tell your story.

Alastair McIntyre
http://www.electricscotland.com