Andy wrote a great blog post yesterday about a family in a dire situation being locked into a contract with LA Fitness. The news spread like wild fire on Twitter. To the point where LA Fitness told them they didn’t have to pay. A little too late though, the corporate image has been severely dented.

In stark contrast, I came across another large brand capturing the voices of social media users. This time it was Sainsburys on Facebook.

As I scrolled through the barrage of messages from friends, I noticed this letter from a 3 year old asking Sainsbury’s why it calls its tiger bread tiger bread when it looks  like a giraffe.:

Then straight afterwards, a second letter. This was a reply from Sainsbury’s agreeing with the child and offering £3 giftcard.

When this story was first put on Facebook, it had around 15,000 shares with a few hours. Now there is a Facebook fanpage dedicated to Sainsburys Toger Bread, made by a fan.

People bang on about “making something viral” or “how do we get more likes”… here’s the secret guys… ready ?

Do Something Worth Talking About

It didn’t take long to write the reply to the girl’s letter. But it could have eaily ended up on the ‘to-do’ pile.

Stop thinking about your own company and start thinking how you can overdeliver!! You never know, people might even talk about it.

In the olden days (about five years ago), if your big corporate company was nasty to someone, the only recourse was to write an angry letter to the local newspaper and hope their ‘consumer champion’ could take it up on your behalf. Sometimes, fearing the bad publicity that could come from such articles, many companies would concede and hold out an olive branch of hope.

Often though, knowing that advertising-hungry newspapers were unlikely to bite the hands that feed them, they’d simply point to their terms and conditions and flick a couple of corporate fingers up to them.

Social media has changed all that. Read the rest of this entry »

Google Plus was one of the new things that launched itself last year and within days of it arriving it was being called a failure many reviewers. Because it wasn’t being used by as many people as Facebook and the media had called it “the Facebook killer”, it was written off as another Google cock-up.

But were they too hasty? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s fair to say that 2011 was mental as far as SEO is concerned. Every week something new would be announced that says “hey guys, do this in order to beat Google” and “you’re doing that still? You’re soooooo January, c’mon, it’s the middle of February now, that doesn’t work!”

It’s enough to make the average man in the street (well, the man in the street with a website and the Internet) to think that it’s absolutely impossible to rank on Google anymore because nerds have taken over. Have you seen “SEO For Dummies” on Amazon? Over 400 pages!! Who’s going to read that!!?? Read the rest of this entry »

“Facebook will boost your brand”

“People are making fortunes from Facebook”

“A Facebook fan-page brings massive return on investment”

These are just some of the absolute cock-and-bull statements that fall from the turgid mouths of people who promote themselves as “Social Media Consultants”. Yes, they do exist, you’ve seen them and I’ve seen them. Heck, I’ve even met a couple in the flesh which is why I keep a bottle of that steriliser spray in my top pocket just in case I have to shake their hands and pretend to tolerate their sweaty pale skin. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember Google Buzz? Eh? Remember it? The social network style chatty-thing that was going to be a Twitter-like tool to allow us all to communicate etc.? Use it? Nahh, nor me. Well, you can scratch it off the ‘To-do’ list because it’s gone away, gone the way of the Dodo. As a method of social networking (or whatever it was) it is no more.

Tossed into the rubbish bin like so many other failed attempts to get the masses to interact using a new, more streamlined and efficient platform. Problem was, though, nobody really used it. Read the rest of this entry »

You really have to keep your eye on the ball these days. If you’re getting or even hoping to get your clients via the web then you need to make sure you’re ready for the “next big thing” whatever that is and as an SEO company we are constantly looking to see what works and what doesn’t with regards attracting customers.

Of course there will always be algorithm changes (the last one caused lots of pain for many) but then there are what I think of as the psychological changes – the changes that make people behave in a different way and there’s just been a whopping great change that you need to take notice of.

Read the rest of this entry »

Being in the business for as long as I have, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing so many social network failures that I’ve got a healthy understanding of what works and what doesn’t and more importantly, what you should never do, ever, with social networking.

So read on if you want to know what I’ve discovered that can actually mean the difference between getting a job or not and what can get you into big trouble with the boss… Read the rest of this entry »

A few months ago some talking head from Facebook said that they were going to take on Google. This was obviously fuelled by the fact that they’d just got half the planet poking each other and ‘liking’ each others pictures of the staff party where Dianne photocopied her backside and broke the glass.

People analysed this and said “what’s this fool talking about? Facebook isn’t a search tool???”

They were right, but they were missing a valid point, one I’ve been making for a while…

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s very rare I sit and watch adverts between TV programs, usually I’m just filling time until Charlie Brooker or Horizon is on, but even I’ve noticed a trend in advertisements these days where they show a bit of a trailer and then say “Google <something>” to find out more. The one I noticed today said “Google number 4″ so I thought I would.

Read the rest of this entry »