The rapid adoption of mobile and location aware smartphones has seen the dawn of location based applications. Whilst often based around gaming, these applications enable hyper-local marketing. Currently Foursquare appears to be the dominant application in this space, with brands such a Starbucks being quick to see the potential and get involved. Checkin-apps, as they are starting to be called, are likely to be incorporated into many social platforms and become a normal part of consumer behaviour. Facebook is already rolling out a checkin feature, and other smaller sites are likely to follow. The time is right to work out what geo-aware functionality could mean to your business. This post highlights some of the second tier players that you should be aware of.

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The humble blog, despite being mentioned frequently, it seems to remain often misunderstood. Yet this established vehicle provides clear and quantifiable value for Charities and Professional Services organizations, as well as many other B2B businesses.  In this article I try to address some of the main reasons your organization should invest time into this social channel (you did know it was a form of social media didn’t you?), as well as describing the common pitfalls to avoid. Whilst it would be possible to write a book about blogging for businesses, this article will point you in the write direction. Read the rest of this entry »

As I have written at some length previously SEO is not a major concern for every business or indeed online property. However, when it is appropriate then it takes more than good fortune to ensure that your content is found by the right people at the right time and acted upon. Whilst social media continues to get huge amounts of attention the reality is that generating a meaningful sales return from social channels remains nearly impossible for the vast majority of businesses, where as SEO really can deliver results. So what does it take to execute a competent SEO campaign?

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Listening to web agencies and digital marketeers, one could be forgiven for thinking that Twitter was a vital cog in every organisations marketing plan. However when one examines real data rather than melodramatic hype a rather different picture emerges. Read the rest of this entry »

The Daily Mail has decided to stop pre-moderation of comments on its website, a move which should see an explosion in the number of comments left on the site. Of course whilst nobody would want to be seen to be “trolling”, it does raise some immediate opportunities for you to increase awareness of in your personal / business brand through the judicial deployment of your opinions.