How many marketing activities do you need?

In the last couple of weeks I’ve heard two different marketing presentations that give very different advice and I wanted to share them with you and let you decide which is right. More is less At the first presentation, we were shown the idea of a wheel with a number of spokes. The presenter said [...]

Online marketing may not be quick, but it’s effective

As the recession deepens (and all those BNI types who still testify that there isn’t a recession, wake up and smell the coffee), businesses are starting to appear a mite desperate. This is when marketing gets a raw deal, especially if the CEOs don’t really understand what marketing is all about. Looking around and reading [...]

Popularity, sociability and desire

The Royal Wedding has been a really ‘big’ thing during the past month, not just here in jolly old Blighty, but absolutely massive in the States. They haven’t got a Royal Family, so anything that sounds like a fairy tale appeals to those sovereign starved souls on the other side of the pond, and it [...]

What is Foursquare and can it be used for business?

Foursquare is basically a local service-based social network-come-game which you can play online and, more appropriately, via your smart phone. Its main purpose is to tell you where your friends are (if they’re also connected to Foursquare) and vice versa, plus a few more activities to increase the fun. It’s based around the idea of [...]

How do you integrate your online marketing, to save time and money?

The number of ways that you can promote your business through online marketing is constantly growing. It is now accepted that you need an online presence in order to market your business. I was asked to speak about this at a recent FSB IT event in Reading, so I thought I’d share with you a [...]

Will Facebook take over from websites?

The short answer is No. This question is asked because, with some businesses, it appears that their Facebook page is getting more hits than their website, but let me assure you these statistics appear to be deceptive. But let’s start at the beginning. To succeed on Facebook depends on your product (and that includes services) [...]

Is being the fastest the best?

It is commonplace to hear that an event had received a large audience because it has been publicised on Twitter. This does, of course, depend on how many followers the Twitterer had, what time of day the tweet was sent, how many times, and what it said. And the viral element: how many times it [...]

How does social networking link together?

The beauty of social networking is that it has been designed to link up to each other. Nothing has been left out on a limb, as that would be social suicide. Even competitors such as Facebook and LinkedIn carefully eye each other over the wall, but they contain the same kinds of applications (even if they [...]

Is tweeting a waste of time?

To the uninitiated Twitter may be considered a useless pursuit. The idea of reading these little ‘messages’ that rapidly zip past your eyes, all seemingly unconnected with each other, blathering on about nothing in particular, would seem like a waste of time. Until you analyse why people do twitter. Social networking is about being sociable, [...]

How do you succeed in Twitter?

Twitter, as with all social networking, is only as good as its player. How you use it depends on your mind-set, goals and aspirations, friendly and sociable disposition, altruism and willing to share, natural curiosity and having some time to spare. Of course, if you look at it in the wider perspective, how much does [...]