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 »

In this world of up to the minute information, user participation and conversational communication, you may wonder if there is still a role for the traditional website? The answer is certainly yes. But in order to keep pace you almost certainly need to modernise it by integrating a blog. Why is a blog important and how do you create a successful one? Read the rest of this entry »

Increasingly Social Media (SoMe) is being seen as a corporate resource and not just the domain of the marketing and communications team. After Marketing, HR have been one of the first departments to adopt SoMe, and for good reason. Not only do HR need to be concerned about employees SoMe usage, they also potentially have an important new resource to enhance to the recruitment process. But could using SoMe as part of the selection process, specifically candidate screening, turn out to be a problem? Read the rest of this entry »

LinkedIN is rolling out a complete overhaul of its Groups feature over the next few weeks, in a bid to try and become a little more contemporary in the experience they deliver. For some time LinkedIN seems to have almost hidden behind the excuse of being a “business” platform, but perhaps they have realised that their future survival will require them to meet modern users web expectations, often set outside of business? So what are these new features and what will it mean to your business on LinkedIN?

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