As I enthusiastically discuss marketing ideas with clients, the reaction is often “sounds great, but – too time consuming”.
However, like getting fit or learning a language, ‘a little and often’ can often bring the best long term results.
So, here’s the first in a series of “5 Minute Marketing Tips” – useful, relevant and quick actions you can take in five minutes to make a lasting, positive impact on your business.
#1: Email Signatures
The preceding post outlined some basic steps in monitoring the reputation of your organisation or brand online.
It is important to know what is being said about you online, but what can you do about it?
Four simple actions to take are:
1. Claim your business
2. Take care with the information that you can control
3. Get the basics in place before promoting your message
4. Respond carefully and immediately
Continue reading for details and slideshow of examples of poorly managed online reputation.
To comprehensively monitor and manage every mention of your organisation on the 273,301,445* websites currently in existence requires resources beyond the reach of most. However, you can cover a lot of bases with a little effort, by focusing on a small number of important sites and using automated searches and alerts.
At a minimum, set up alerts on key search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, by selecting keywords you wish to monitor; they will kindly email you the results of these searches.
Next, focus on important sites, which are the ones with:
* High traffic and interactivity
* Good search engine ranking for keywords relevant to your business
* Relevance to your business sector and location
……..
Researching and booking a recent trip to lovely Lisbon, I was struck by how one can get it so right and so wrong, in simple ways.
As always, it boils down to solid customer care and business communication principles, regardless of the technology employed.
A simple, friendly email from a B&B contrasts with impersonal responses to poor Tripadvisor reviews by a doubtless better resourced hotel chain.
Continue reading for more details and screenshots of the ‘best and worst’ tourism communications…
Many businesses I have met through consulting or at social media training courses are using…
Many businesses have inadvertently been set up on Facebook as a personal profile instead of…
Explain it to your grandparents and it seems like wizardry of the highest order: documents, images, contracts, music – anything – teleporting instantaneously across the globe to limitless recipients; an inestimable boon to business communications.
Email has transformed business, but its very simplicity and speed leaves it open to misuse and poor standards.
Attaching files to email, in particular, is a potential minefield.
The bottom line, as always in e-business, is that solid business principles are fundamental to success. In this case, respect for your correspondent, attention to detail and expectation management.
Continue reading for 5 simple tips for maintaining professional standards in emailing attachments…
When a design house mocks up a brochure or website for proofing, you will notice that the dummy text used often begins:
“”Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…”
So, what does this mean, and why is it used?
Although the presenters were interesting, engaging and expert at the Dublin Web Summit last Friday, they were not the best thing about the event. It was an absolute pleasure to be surrounded by positivity and creative thinking at every turn. Not one of the dozens of people I spoke with whined or complained about the government or the economy; it was all new ideas, possibilities, innovation. That respite from doom and gloom alone made attending worthwhile.
Continue reading for my take on the most devious, obvious, comforting, alliterative (ahem), clever, challenging and reassuring moments of the event…
Google Local Business Center is now known as Google Places, and it’s worth checking to ensure that:
(a) you have claimed and verified your listing, and
(b) you are making the most of your listing potential.
A quick browse through Google Places shows that many businesses have neglected this free promotional opportunity – read on to see how to quickly check and optimise your profile on this high-ranking listing.