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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Social Media challenges for a Growing Business

Telephones and Social Media

Many of the businesses we deal with are owner-managed, and the responsibility for business communication falls to one person at the top of the organisation.  But what happens as the business grows?  It’s time to think about how social media and email communication is managed in the workplace, so that employees know where they stand…

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Word of Mouth in the 21st Century

“I get all my business by word of mouth” says our builder.  That’s great – but what does ‘Word of Mouth’ mean these days?  In 2004, Kate Fox wrote “The mobile phone has… become the modern equivalent of the garden fence or the village green” (1).  Nine years on, the internet is where we do…

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#hmvxfactorfirings – a Social Media lesson

The Twitterverse was treated to a great cautionary tale yesterday when HMV employees ‘hijacked’ the firm’s Twitter account and ‘live tweeted’ from the HR department where 60 staff were being relieved of their jobs.  It’s easy to think that this was simply irresponsible behaviour, hitting out at administrators for personal reasons, but the lessons go…

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MX5 Parts: A social media case study

This article was originally published in September 2012, and is updated and reproduced here by permission of Divario. MX5 Parts, a subsidiary of Scimitar International, is Europe’s largest provider of parts and accessories for the Mazda MX-5, Miata and Eunos Roadster motor vehicles.  As fellow owners, MX5 Parts is a very active sponsor and supporter…

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Why Online Reviews Matter to Small Businesses

Feedback Form

Online reviews are in the news again.  Big businesses are setting out their stall for 2013 – motor manufacturer Kia has published its intention to focus on customer reviews  this year, and Amazon has caused controversy by tightening its book review policy, deleting thousands of ‘suspect’ reviews in pursuit of accurate customer feedback.  Consumers are…

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Caveat collator: Sharer Beware!

How long do you pause to think before ‘sharing’ something on social media, or forwarding a circular email?  Do you take tweets and posts at face value and pass them straight on to your trusting fans and followers?  It’s so easy to hit that button, but what does fast and furious sharing tell people about…

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