Finding your mammoth

Have you defined your Unique Selling Point? What is the USP that will bring customers to your door? The chances are it’s NOT your product. Very few businesses are unique, and most of us are in a crowded market trying to shout louder than our competitors about the same service. It’s time to think outside…

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5 steps to simple, effective customer service

Small businesses have to do it all, and getting the balance right is one of the biggest challenges entrepreneurs can face.  Developing your product or service, building awareness, networking or establishing a physical presence, delivering the goods, making sure the numbers add up, managing a growing business, supervising staff…… Customer service just adds to the…

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Online ROI? It’s all about customer service.

There’s a lot of suspicion in businesses of all sizes about the value of spending time online. How does it deliver anything to the bottom line? Study after study has tried to nail down the return on investment (ROI) of social media activity, and advertising metrics such as click-through rates try to reassure companies that…

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Whither Facebook?

This week Mashable published a blog by a 13 year old New Yorker who laments the fact that now she’s old enough for her own Facebook account, it doesn’t live up to the years of anticipation.  You can read the full blog here.  So does this clearly tech-savvy teen have a point?  Has Facebook reached…

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5 reasons I love my Twitter followers

What makes Twitter followers special?  It’s exciting hitting a nice round number (but oh the suspense when you are balancing on the cusp!) but that doesn’t exactly put bread on the table – or does it?  Here’s why I love my Twitter followers:

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Engaging your trainees: The SE/CE dilemma

Mt Everest

We’ve talked in a lot of detail before about the SE/CE curve – the balance between social engagement and corporate experience, and how this affects the risk profile of a business.  Today we are looking more closely at how the point on the Social Engagement (SE) continuum makes a big difference to how social media…

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Don’t slip up! Managing risk on the SE/CE Curve

Banana Skin

Managing risk is at the heart of a successful business as it grows. But what are the risks posed by the online space? They all depend on where you sit on the SE/CE Curve – the balance between Social Engagement and Corporate Experience. We see businesses at every point of their online development, from confident…

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SEO: Trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?

Making a silk purse

Remember all those lovely metaphors our parents trotted out when we were kids? “A bad workman blames his tools”; “It’s an ill wind that blows no good”; “If you don’t want the whelks don’t much them about” (or was that just my family?); and “Look at that! Mutton dressed as lamb!”.  Of them all, the…

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