So what is all the fuss about social media? Is it just about letting more people know that you are around and using an online tool to do so?…And then what?  Does a social media presence mean more business through the door? Unfortunately I would say no, that alone is not going to hit the mark.
Treating social media like this would be the equivalent of putting a newspaper ad online. Sure, if you get a few connections here and there and the odd comment from your customers on your Facebook page or on Twitter, you are fostering your image and possibly getting the odd new client.
But the whole point of social media is about creating a viral effect reaching way beyond what you could hope to generate offline. This would be word of mouth on steroids. If

Interesting how quickly online marketing is changing. The latest news is that gradually, what used to enable you to rank high on Google is being eroded by…you guessed it … social media!
Watch this video

What does it mean for your business? Well if you are like 95% of business owners who have had a web page for a while, you may still be wondering how much money it has brought into the till. Has it really paid for the investment?
Now for any business, the Holly Grail would be to have a way of getting free exposure to many thousands of people, and  have a powerful way for all these people to virally REFER people to your bus

If you experience downtimes in your business, due to seasonal variations or demand fluctuations, that could be a great opportunity to strengthen the relationship between company and staff.
What I mean by this is that management/owners often need to make a formal time to ask what their staff want for their life and how that fits in with the big picture of the company they work for.
Of course this is a 2 way process: Listening first prepares the ground to teach staff where the company is going, and how their own goals and needs can be aligned with the company goals and needs, be it for a short time.
Having transient staff is often used as a reason (or an excuse?) to not even bother with this level of communication. But that may be where the missed o

Malcolm Gladwell in his great book “The Tipping Point” explores how trends can start from changes originally affecting a small number of people.
In the now famous case study of the viral explosion of “Hush Puppies”, Gladwell also shows that the tipping point often comes from the convergence of several simultaneous mini- trends, quickly spreading like a virus.

As a business owner, it’s hard not to dream about how you might create “The Tipping Point” in your own business.

Sure, in the case of Hush Puppies, the spread happened without any input from the owners of the company, and almost unbeknown to them. But there is still a valuable lesson in this: simply that in small business, your own tipping point will happen as a result of ge

Luckily in business you don’t always have to be this quick. And even better news, your solution often lays in small incremental improvements that all contribute to a breakthrough. The main lesson here is that your mindset needs to be resolutely focused on solutions, happy watching!