15 Ways to Give your Business an Unfair Advantage – Part Two

 Here are some great tips I read recently in Real Business Magazine. Click here to read part one; part three to follow soon! 6. Put social media at the heart of your business “Social media isn’t just about marketing – you have to try and develop your entire business culture around it, “Explains Andrew Gerrard, [...]

15 Ways to Give your Business an Unfair Advantage – Part one

 Here are some great tips I read recently in Real Business Magazine. Parts two and three to follow soon! 1. Keep your customers happy – at all cost “Start with the customer. What makes your proposition better than anyone else’s?” asks Simon Calver, chief executive of LoveFilm. He says LoveFilm’s brand is built around three [...]

Don’t sell me X, sell me Y

What do you really sell? If you’re a Marketing Consultant, do you really sell Marketing Consultancy? Is that what people actually buy from you? Here’s an exercise you can use to get a fresh look on what you really sell. Ask people at a networking meeting, your clients or your staff for alternatives to what [...]

Never be ashamed of making things easy

There is nothing more off-putting than being spouted at by a lot of jargon, especially if you’re not familiar with it. It can be very demoralizing to keep asking what ‘x’ means, and wearisome to retain the information and applying it to what you already know. Therefore if you produce a new product or service [...]

The importance of interaction

When you’re dealing with social media, one of the most important things to consider is interaction. Interaction is when your readers, audience, fans, friends or whatever are compelled to respond to your social networking activities. This will happen when you post up something that is worth commenting on, full of value, beneficial and helpful, entertaining [...]

What is the difference between Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0?

For those who are still confused by my title, Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 are the various stages the internet has evolved, and how it has affected electronic, email, online or digital marketing (the various terms for marketing on the internet also suggests how technology and its concepts have rapidly changed). Web 1.0 deals with [...]

How to avoid a boring blog

Blogs are hard work. They require consistent updating to make them successful, and unless you love or excel in writing skills, the effort required can be daunting. Perhaps you feel you run out of things to say, you wonder if what you write is good enough, you don’t think anybody is reading it, or you [...]

How comments are important for interaction

One of the aspects of a blog is that it is interactive. This means readers are able to contribute to your blog if they have something to say. Blogging programmes automatically add an area after posts where readers can add their point of view. The ability to comment is also part of the phenomenon Web2.0, [...]

How links benefit blogs

Blogs thrive on links. In fact, blogs are full of links, contained mostly in the content of the sidebars, both internal (navigation around the blog) and external (destination exits or entry from referral sites). You can tell which are links on this blog because they are underlined and your cursor changes when you mouse over them. [...]

Does blogging have an etiquette?

People have various concepts of what constitutes blogging etiquette. Of course there are the obvious ones like being nice to other bloggers, and much of these suggestions are just common sense, so no etiquette is set in stone and does rely on the goodwill of the bloggers themselves. Here are some to consider: 1. Don’t [...]