"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
Jeremy S. Anderson
Archive for ‘Social Media’
Getting started in Social Media
Thursday, June 16th, 2011
I am just putting the finishing touches to the information I will sharing at the Ask the Expert event at Farnham Castle this evening. This event is organised by Enterprise First and it is aimed at helping businesses – both start-ups and established to access advice and expertise about certain key business areas. I will be there talking about Social Media.
Posted by Chris Gair in Blog, News, Social Media
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The power of business blogging
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011
Whilst I am a very firm believer in the power of using Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook to promote and build your brand, reputation and customer relationships, it is really important to blog as well.
In fact, the glory of your own blog is that you control it. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and others are all controlled by the people who run these platforms. Just think of the outcry when Facebook changes an administrative set-up or the layout of a page – and there is little we as users can do about it unless lots of people complain.
Posted by Chris Gair in Blog, Opinion, Social Media
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Why WordPress rules the world
Monday, May 9th, 2011
I still get amazed when I have the same conversation over and over again with people about their websites and discover that they have just paid for a new site but that it doesn’t use WordPress. Instead they have an often good looking site but with no RSS feed capability and usually a ‘bespoke’ CMS developed by the agency that have created the site.
Whilst legacy CMS software was the way things used to be done, this is just not the case anymore. What are the benefits to the client of having this type of CMS system when such a brilliant, open-source technology as WordPress is readily available? Actually it says more about the web agency or developer than it does about the needs of the client.
Posted by Chris Gair in Blog, Opinion, Social Media
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Embracing and embedding Social Media
Friday, May 6th, 2011
It’s good to finally be getting back into the swing of things now that our many Bank Holidays are over – no more Easter, Royal Wedding or May Bank Holidays – well until the end of the month anyway!
Posted by Chris Gair in Blog, Opinion, Social Media
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Social Media: why you need it and how to use it
Thursday, April 28th, 2011
The more I learn about Social Media and the more I train others about Social Media, the more I realise how few businesses and individuals really think about and understand why they need it and how they should use it. And this is evident in either how they use it or if they don’t use it all.
Which is why I love doing training sessions and workshops with clients on Social Media where we get to talk through the different Social Media channels and to debate how they could be using it and why it would be of value. It is great to either be able to empower an individual or business to really leverage Social Media – or alternatively to clearly understand the gaps in order to fill them through our Social Media Manager services.
Posted by Chris Gair in Blog, Opinion, Social Media
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Another “social media has plateaued” article on Mashable!
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
Yesterday I blogged about a debate taking place on whether social media has plateaued in terms of usage and this morning I have found another article on Mashable stating the same thing. Whilst this seems to be based on actual stats rather than the lack of ground-breaking technology at SXSW I still personally don’t think that social media has plateaued.
Rather than go back over what I said yesterday – you can read that blog here – I think that these stats do seem to suggest that social networking is becoming more complex and diverse. Which means those of us who advise about social media strategy and provide social media services need to make sure we keep up to date with the spread and mix available out there.
Posted by Chris Gair in Blog, Opinion, Social Media
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How’s this for a brilliant blog?
Tuesday, April 12th, 2011
I have just finished reading a fantastic blog by Liri Andersson in response to a piece published on Mashable recently. Her blog, titled ‘How naive to think social media has hit a plateau‘ succinctly describes how social media is still in its infancy and has a long way to go before there is a chance of this happening.
She clearly states that whilst it may seem to be plateauing at the cutting-edge of things there is so much catch up to be done by the majority of businesses that it is laughable to talk about plateauing for the businesses who have yet to or have just started to embrace social media. And actually the real impact will be delivered when the businesses that effect our day-to-day lives start to leverage social media.
Posted by Chris Gair in Blog, Opinion, Social Media
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Don’t let your LinkedIn profile raise more questions than it answers
Thursday, March 24th, 2011
I wrote earlier about the importance of our business legacy – both as an individual and as a company. And this has led me to think about another issue I have come across recently.
We are all increasingly using LinkedIn to promote and network ourselves and our businesses and I often get asked how people can best utilise this online tool. It is definitely worth being on LinkedIn, not least because it is free and LinkedIn spends a lot of time, effort and money on marketing our profiles with all the search engines. When we search for an individual online nowadays, we are very likely to find their LinkedIn profile is one of the top links returned in the search results.
Posted by Chris Gair in Blog, Opinion, Social Media
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How to search for a social media expert
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
I have had a number of conversations recently about social media, about what it is and why it works. And I’ve discovered that whilst the general mantra is ‘you must blog, you must tweet, you must have a Facebook page’, like all things it doesn’t work for everyone. And as with websites, if you’re going to do it badly or half-heartedly you may as well not do it all.
Posted by Chris Gair in Blog, Opinion, Social Media
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The power of blogging – why it really works
Thursday, November 4th, 2010
We’ve been having a fascinating time recently with one of our newest clients, Dominic Streatfeild who is currently counting down (with the aid of his new blog site) to the launch of his fourth book ‘A History of the World Since 9/11′. With a title like that he is proving to be an attention-grabbing case study to talk about at my 4N Business Breakfasts but it’s also been amazing to monitor his site traffic and watch his Facebook page as momentum grows around not just his forthcoming book but previous publications and his recent jaunt in Chile as one of the only journalists with direct access to the minehead and rescue team at Camp Esperanza.
Posted by Chris Gair in Blog, Clients, Social Media
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