August 31st, 2010
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
For all the praise that brand advertisers have for social media, they must be aware that it’s very much a double-edged sword. And for all the free marketing, advertising and brand promotion via Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Linked In, and other platforms used to help build an identity and relationship with your customers, it can just as quickly turn on you and your brand.
Social media disasters occur for a number of reasons, the first being that your company probably messed up. It may not have been intentional, but something, somewhere down the line, went wrong enough for someone to complain and it was enough for others to vocalize that complaint en masse. One mistake is all it takes for social media to turn against your brand.
No one is perfect and you can’t expect to please everyone all the time, so the best trick is to be prepared for how to handle things if your company finds itself under attack in the social realm. Here are three examples of companies who were attacked by social media and how they handled, or should have handled the situation. Learn from their mistakes or successes so you can stay on social media’s good side.
Read more …
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August 6th, 2010
It’s the summer holidays for many, and things typically slow down.
Not for us I’m glad to say, as the internet gets busier and busier with more online business being done than ever before.
A key part of making any business work is being to measure its performance and make effective decisions on your findings.
The internet is no different.
Using tools such as Google Analytics, it’s possible to see what’s working and more importantly not working with your website.
We continue to get asked more questions about Google Analytics than any other subject, that’s why we’re offering a free training session throughout this August.
Drop us a line or follow this link if you’d like to know more.
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April 1st, 2010
1. To Express Your Thoughts and Opinions
You have something to say, and blogs provide a place to say it and be heard.
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2. To Market or Promote Something
Blogging is a great way to help market or promote yourself or your business, product or service.
3. To Help People
Many blogs are written to help people who may be going through similar situations that the blogger has experienced. Many parenting and health-related blogs are written for this purpose.
4. To Establish Yourself as an Expert
Blogs are wonderful tools to help bloggers establish themselves as experts in a field or topic. For example, if you’re trying to get a job in a specific field or hoping to publish a book on a specific topic, blogging can help legitimize your expertise and expand your online presence and platform.
5. To Connect with People Like You
Blogging brings like-minded people together. Starting a blog can help you find those people and share your opinions and thoughts.
6. To Make a Difference
Many blogs are issue-based meaning the blogger is trying to provide information to sway people’s thinking in a certain direction. Many political blogs and social issues blogs are written by bloggers who are trying to make a difference in their own ways.
7. To Stay Active or Knowledgeable in a Field or Topic
Since successful blogging is partially dependent on posting frequency and providing updated, fresh information, it’s a perfect way to help a blogger stay abreast of the events in a specific field or topic.
8. To Stay Connected with Friends and Family
The world has shrunk since the Internet has become more accessible. Blogs provide a simple way for family and friends to stay connected from different parts of the world by sharing stories, photos, videos and more.
9. To Make Money
It’s important to point out that most bloggers don’t make a lot of money blogging, but the potential does exist to generate revenue from your blog with hard work and commitment. There are many bloggers who bring in big bucks. With patience and practice, you can make money through advertising and other income-generating activities on your blog.
10. To Have Fun and Be Creative
Many people start a blog simply for fun. Perhaps a blogger is a fan of a particular actor or loves knitting and wants to share that passion through a blog. One of the most important keys to successful blogging is having a passion about your blog’s topic, so you can write prolifically about it. Some of the best and most interesting blogs started out as blogs that were written just for fun and to give the blogger a creative outlet.
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February 10th, 2010
We’ve been talking at seminars throughout the county and in London for some time about Social Media and have seen first-hand how it has benefitted our business.
By Social Media, I refer to the likes of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging to name a few.
But here’s a slightly different use for it.
Over the past 12 months we’ve ran three recruitment campaigns each for different roles.
We’ve traditionally used Recruitment Agencies, but as a small business, the cost of using a good agency has often been crippling when added to the time taken to induct and train along with lack of productivity whilst your new staff member learns the ropes.
We took the decision to practice what we preach and give Social Media a try.
So, here’s what happened…
We wrote up a job specification as usual, and wrote a blog post advertising the position.
We then used twitter, facebook and Linked In, to announce the position.
Finally we used facebook to advertise. Using facebook we were able to target based on interest and location, so for example (anyone interested in web development, mysql and php within 40 miles of St Albans).
We ran each campaign for approximately 4 weeks.
On average we received 20-30 CVs, half of which were suitable. On average we interviewed between 8 and 10 candidates, and on two occasions hired one person and on one occasion hired two candidates.
To summarise:
We spent the same amount of time filtering CVs, interviewing and inducting. Two hours in total was spent setting up the social media and advertising, and the total cost of advertising was on average £17.00.
A good recruitment agency is worth every penny, however, if you fancy rolling your sleeves up and doing it yourself Social Media is certainly worth considering.
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December 8th, 2009
You’re a natural blogger and can always think of lots of engaging articles to write, not only that you’ve always got time to blog.
Is that you?
It’s certainly not me, and it’s certainly not most people who have a blog, so how can life be made easier?
Make a series
You’ve probably thought of at least one great article in your time and spent hours writing pages worth of content and feel really proud of yourself.
How about break it in to smaller posts, in fact a series, maybe 4 or 5 individual posts, maybe more?
Suddenly you’ve got a number of smaller bite size articles, and your reader has a reason to want to read the next.
Not only that, if you’ve split your post in to 5 posts, you’ve got the next 5 days/weeks/months covered in one creative spurt of inspiration!
Hints and tips
10 top tips, 5 top tips, 10 ways to improve, 10 ways to avoid, get the idea?
If your customer asked you for 10 reasons why they should use your product or service, or how to purchase, I bet you could answer the question easily.
Hints and tips are often, concise, interesting and useful and above all show the world that you really do know what you’re talking about, hence build trust and credibility.
Answer questions
In our businesses we get asked questions, and guess what, these are likely to be the same questions people type in to a search engine.
If people often ask you “how do I know if an accountant is right for me”, write an article about it. You may already have an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section on your website, so why not elaborate on that in
your blog?
Keep it simple
Keep it short, keep it interesting, keep it simple!
Bear in mind that anyone might be reading your blog from anywhere in the world and at any time, and they may not know you at all.
Never assume any previous knowledge, always explain and fully qualify acronyms and jargon, but keep it short and to the point.
If you’re looking to generate interest, a phone call, a question or a comment, keep that in mind and always leave the reader wanting more, otherwise why would they contact you?
Schedule your posts
That’s right, schedule your posts.
In reality, many small business owners often write 2 or 3 posts at a time and often out of hours.
Avoid posting all your articles at the same time and at times of the day when people aren’t likely to want to read them.
Schedule them for times of the day you think they’re most likely to read them, and schedule them for different days.
Sometimes this will need that little bit of extra planning, but trust me, it’s worth it!
As always, drop us a line or give us a call on 0845 890 2992 if you need any help or would like to know more.
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