Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: business advice

  • Twitter 101

    To help businesses establish themselves on Twitter, the service has released a free guide to show companies how to use it, to help them build relationships, along with some of the best practice tips and case studies.

    Twitter 101 opens with a basic description of the service and illustrates how Twitter can be used by businesses, most of which we’ve discussed previously. There are also a few cute stories, such as ice-cream-deprived workers in the empire State Building sending out tweets to a delivery service.

    Having established what Twitter can do for your business, the next page goes through the set up process.

    One important flag they raise is how they don’t support name squatting and supply a contact link to report people who are trying to hog names, so if you find your business or trade name has been pinched by someone who doesn’t have a valid claim to the name, you can take action.

    Once online, Twitter 101 takes you to the basic terminology. If you wanted to know what a hashtag, trending topic or Tweetup is, this is the page to visit. Probably the most valuable page is the Best Practices section, which details the good, the bad and the spammy. It also provides a link to report spammers and other dills who abuse the service.

    If you are going to only read one section, Best Practices is the bit to read. You’ll avoid many mistakes and get more from the service, both as an individual and a business.

    Finally, the site finishes up with some case studies. Along with the well-known Dell and JetBlue stories, is the description of how Dave Brookes of Teusner Wines in the Barossa Valley started using Twitter after watching Lance Armstrong in the Tour Down Under.

    Finally, there’s some links to useful resources on using Twitter. The guide continually emphasises how it is all about building relationships. Twitter may not be the right tool for you or your business, but the Twitter 101 guide will certainly help you decide one way or the other.

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  • Death of the cashback scheme

    I’m no fan of cashback schemes. Having dealt with them on behalf of customers in my old IT support business, I’ve seen too many people messed around by them.

    So the news that the Officeworks chain will stop offering them is welcome and hopefully will see the industry move away from these often unethical and unfair practices.

    The main reason for offering cashback schemes is to keep commisions up for salespeople. If a TV or laptop vendor simply cut prices by $200 they would find the salespeople steering customers to more expensive competitors.

    So it’s no surprise to see which stores aren’t following Officework’s lead.

    If you are offered a cashback, ignore it while negotiating a price as it’s none of the store’s business what you do with it and most certainly won’t help you if there’s a problem down the track. Treat any cashbacks as a bonus and don’t factor it into your purchase.

    Or better still, avoid electronics stores staffed by commission driven sharks.

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  • Why paying for Twitter followers is a dumb idea

    I’ve just read the Smart Company article on uSocial’s Social Media marketing services. I find the idea of paying for followers in Twitter, or friends in Facebook or contacts in LinkedIn, bizarre.

    What uSocial’s prospective clients don’t understand is social media isn’t a game to collect the most fans, it’s a way of building communities around you and your brand.

    It’s far better to have twenty passsionate fans than two thousand Twitter followers who just ignore you anyway.

    To build a community you need people who care about what you do, your product or your brand. If you have to pay to get the appearance of having people who care that shows you don’t have anything worth caring about.

    You can’t buy friends online or offline, so save your money and focus on why you’re different and why people should love what you do.

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  • Why networking is essential

    business-card-2I met a business owner last week who complained other business at his local chamber of commerce meetings spent most of their exchanging business cards.

    He couldn’t see this was the point of a local chamber of commerce; to meet and get to know the other businesses in your community.

    Community is what business is about. Every business, big and small, is part of a community. Put those communities together and we have a society.

    Running a business is a social endeavour above everything else and networking is one a required skill. Some of us do it well while many of us do it poorly.

    But you still have to do it.

    If you have a problem networking, or you don’t like exchanging business cards, then you need to hire or partner with someone who does.

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  • A failure of trust and communication

    Webcentral’s much publicised e-mail failure left thousands of small business owners without email last week.

    The most breathtaking aspect of this saga is the total lack of communication by WebCentral. They failed on every level to keep their customers informed.

    A simple, short message stating there was an outage on the front page of their website and on their support lines would have saved many of their customers hours of troubleshoting and stress.

    The amazing thing is after this embarrassment, WebCentral still launched their new online backup service.

    The success of software as a service depends upon trust and Webcentral has shown they cannot be trusted with their client’s critical systems.

    The joke is Webcentral’s parent company, Melbourne IT, uses the slogan “trusted for online success”.  Webcentral has shown they cannot be trusted.

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