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 …
Posted in FL1, General, Marketing | No Comments »
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.
Posted in Careers, FL1, General | No Comments »
November 26th, 2009
Blogs, Pods and Wikis is a fun and un-techie seminar that will introduce you to some of the new, advanced social media marketing tools that businesses like yours are using to expand.
Next generation social media tools have bought huge opportunities for small companies to compete nationally or internationally with large organisations.
Many of these new tools e.g. Twitter applications are ideally suited to service businesses, SMEs and sole traders.
This is a practical, half-day seminar that will deliver real information and easy to follow techniques.
Who should come? The Directors, Managers and owners of start-ups, SMEs and businesses without a large marketing department.
Unlike many courses, this half-day seminar one will quickly pay for itself – and be highly enjoyable!
We’ve only got two places left, so be quick to book now
Friday 27th November 2009
9.30am (registration from 9.00 am) – 1.00 pm and buffet lunch
at: The County Constitutional Club, 29 Ridgmont Road, St Albans, AL1 3AG
Posted in FL1, Seminars | No Comments »
November 2nd, 2009
Times are a-changing at Twitter – it’s become a serious player in social media.
According to Twitter’s blog, they have "partnered with Google to index the entire world of public tweets as fast as possible and present them to their users in an organized and relevant fashion" Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General, Search Engines, Technology | No Comments »
October 7th, 2009
Social networking sites seem to have a lifespan of about two years before the next-big-thing arrives to steal the limelight.
The MySpace craze died out in the UK way back in 2005, and by 2007 Facebook had become the biggest social networking site of all time, ever.
Now, though, all the talk is about Twitter. And even though it was secretly growing in popularity long before the likes of Philip Schofield starting waffling about it on telly, it’s now taking over from Facebook as the most-talked about community platform.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in FL1, Marketing, Technology | 1 Comment »