If you follow any brand news in social media, you’re probably aware of the criticism Toyota has been receiving over its Superbowl Twitter campaign. If you haven’t heard about it, Toyota wanted to promote its new Camry range, so it started numerous Twitter accounts to send tweets to people about the car. Now, there’s no doubt that having multiple accounts sending out random messages into hashtag conversations is spam. Heck, I’ve written about that here before, and it’s always a big…

Hey there! So I really wanted to add the Something Borrowed option too, but couldn’t think of anything, so the three in the title will have to do. So… It’s been a little quiet here last week, since Kevin Green’s great guest post about LinkedIn (and if you haven’t read it yet, you’re missing a great ongoing discussion in the comments). But there’s a good reason for that, which is where the Something New and Something Old part comes in….

As children, we have unbridled aspirations. We dream to be astronauts. We dream to be explorers. We dream to be princesses. We dream to be the world’s greatest sports star. We dream. Looking back at our childhood dreams, we rarely feel we failed because we didn’t become the astronaut. Or marry the prince. Or found new lands. Or had stadiums cheering our name. Instead, we look back and remember a time when dreams had no limits, and anything was possible,…

I’ve been thinking a lot about collaborative marketing lately, and how we can turn co-existing businesses more into partners and less about missed opportunities. I think there’s a great untapped market for someone that really wants to grab collaborative marketing and run with it. For example – imagine you’re going on a trip. You have to fly to get there, so there are a few processes you need to go through before, during and after: Buying your ticket. Driving to the…

I’m a little tired. Not physically. I could always do with a little more sleep, but then so can everyone. No. I’m more tired about the constant “The End of PR”, “The End of Marketing”, “The End of Print” and “The End of Advertising” missives  that seem to be flying about at the minute. I can’t open my email subscriptions without the latest link shouting out “The end of…. Where now for Industry X?”. I’m an avid blog reader and use Alltop regularly to…

We buy products and services every day. Some we need, some we don’t. But we’ve heard good things about them so we buy them. Who have we heard good things from? Our friends. Our family. Our colleagues. People we trust. Why do we trust them? Because they’re not a mystery to us. They don’t wear masks. They don’t hide behind veils. They don’t try and fool us with trickery. They simply are. You’re in business. You have a blog. You…

If you take a look at a list of the oldest companies in the world, you’ll see the glaringly obvious fact that the majority of the companies listed are Japanese. Germany makes a good argument for having a fair few, while the U.S. begins a late charge once they broke away from British rule. The rest is a mish-mash of European countries and developing countries (at least in the later part of the list). So why does Japan have such a…

What do people think of you when they first meet you? What do you think their immediate impression is? If it’s personally, you might not care too much – after all, to each their own, right? But what if you’re a business offering a service – does that change your train of thought? Does the view of the same new face now hold more sway? Even more so, what if your service is one that defines people’s first impressions of…

For many of us, long term vision can be a scary concept. This is understandable, because it usually means that we’re having to put faith in something we’re doing now not showing a return until much later. This could be our businesses; our blogs; or our budding relationship with a new lover. It’s scary, because while we believe in our hearts that everything will work out, often we get impatient for results that we can see now. We want our business to be profitable right away;…

The great thing about blogging is that you get to meet so many smart people. While a post might start the conversation, the comments take it in a whole new direction altogether, and makes a post better for it. As well as blog comments offering the opportunity to read the views of these smart people, they also allow us to check out more of their writing, thanks to plugins like CommentLuv. I’ve discovered some really great bloggers through comments left…