COMMUNICATION is the name of the game for former high-flying City banker Linda Cheung who has taken her business career in a new direction.

The former European chief operating officer for institutional securities financing at Morgan Stanley is now chief executive officer of Connectegrity, based at Grove House, Chineham.

Anyone meeting Linda for the first time will soon discover that this bubbly and enthusiastic entrepreneur is a thoughtful and great communicator.

She said: “We are very focused about how people communicate, and in the professional world, it is all about relationships and how you build them.

It’s about knowing and trusting – it’s credibility.”

With her business partner, Mark Bower, who worked for Microsoft, her aim is to help business professionals to grow their businesses better – helping them to win new and repeat custom.

It was after taking stock of her fast-paced London life several years ago that Linda decided to realise an ambition to run her own business and moved to the Silicon Valley of north Hampshire.

When she left Morgan Stanley, she left with a dozen connections with LinkedIn. She had never used Facebook or Twitter and admits to being more of a social media cynic.

Now she is an ardent convert.

“You have to understand that this is just another medium to communicate,” said Linda, who believes traditional business best practices should still be applied online.

But she is fully aware of the many pitfalls of using social media such as the sheer volume of information which can be overwhelming, much of which she describes as ‘noise.’ After spending time thoroughly researching what business people want from social media, which is basically driving more business through the door, Linda and Mark have developed a new social media platform called CubeSocial.

Linda explained: “One of the reasons for developing CubeSocial was to filter that noise and find the platforms you should be talking on, and he conversations you should be joining, so you can be much more effective with your use of it.

“The key objective for us was to save busy professionals time, and to find the conversations they should be part of.

“With CubeSocial, you can reach a much larger and more targeted audience.”