Facebook is a wonderful place to build relationships with your clients and potential clients. And I see people with exceptional communities built up around their Facebook pages.

And no traffic at all on their websites. Read more »

Once you set up a system or process for your business, it’s easy to forget about it and just leave it running.

I was put in mind of this the other day, as I wasted tons of time in Vodafone España’s asinine call centre “loop.” You have to go through several levels listening to a computer asking you questions while you press the relevant buttons, only to find you’ve been put through to the wrong department when you finally get to speak to a human! I now know their hold music in detail! While all this was going on, I wondered when was the last time any senior manager at Vodafone had actually tried using their system to see what it was like from a client viewpoint. Read more »

You’ve done all the hard work.

You’ve spent a fortune advertising.

Your website is really well optimised to get search traffic.

You’ve invested time being helpful on social media to people.

And then the enquiry comes in from someone who wants to buy.

And it all goes horribly wrong.

Because the member of your team that answers the enquiry is unhappy, or bored, or hasn’t been trained properly.

Or maybe it’s you?

Either way, it needs addressing. Read more »

Have you checked? What about on an iPad?

Read more »

We had the first running of this new course here in Lanzarote this week, and it went well! We had a full house of people along, and many of them followed on from the introductory course.

Read more »

We’ve written plenty about what you should be doing on Facebook to market your business. In the interests of balance, here are eight things you shouldn’t be doing!

DON’T:

1/ Use Facebook to just blast out publicity about your upcoming events.

2/ Use Facebook to send a very public cryptic message to someone who has annoyed you.

3/ Use Facebook to complain about your boss. She’s probably on there too!

4/ Use Facebook for business communication. When you send me a personal message on Facebook, I might not see it for two days. Email or call if it’s business!

5/ Set up a personal profile for your business. That’s what pages are for! The hint is in the word “Personal.” Read more »

I’ve talked before about why you shouldn’t use a Hotmail or Gmail account for your business. But there’s another mistake many business email users make, and that’s not to put a “From” name into their email system.

If you don’t do that, most email services will simply take the first part of the email address and use that. Read more »

If you can get the culture of your company right, all the rest – good customer service, happy and passionate employees, the creation of a brand, and the generation of profits – comes naturally.

Read more »

Using free Gmail and Hotmail accounts for business is a dangerous way to go:

Read more »

I talked a couple of weeks ago about how you should be finding out where your business is coming from. And hopefully, you’re now asking the question and recording the answers somewhere.

Today I want to focus on the extended opportunity. You can get some amazing data by asking just a few more questions, and you’ll even find that the first answer given is often inaccurate! Read more »