Weaving your way through the mass of social media packages available can be daunting for a small business. There is lots to consider, so let us help you get started.

Such is the bombardment of information we all receive, many businesses feel they must be on every social media platform at once. It's hard to get rid of that anxious feeling that comes when everyone tells you how some other company is successfully using Facebook to to this, or so and so created a wonderful Instagram campaign that resulted in record sales. Without endless resources, however, this is simply not possible for the average business. You don't have the time or money to replicate what the big companies are doing.

This week I am returning to the theme of online reviews which are exercising a stranglehold over page ranking and search. In a previous post, I discussed the failure of the Search Engines to equate popularity with quality and how review sites impacted on your own business website and I wanted to return to that. Just how do businesses set about counteracting the tyranny of the review? And is such a bad thing, since it is said that 90% of people say they will be influenced by a positive review?

But before I do, I just wanted to remind us all why I think that the whole review process has got out of hand.

There few individuals left who can't see that the internet has become THE indispensable marketing tool for your business, no matter how small or large you are.

People have realised that the web is no longer about tech-savvy individuals coming up with clever ideas, but a bread and butter marketing opportunity that every business should be exploiting to the maximum. Just as email, SMS and Instant Messaging have largely replaced the letter and supplemented the telephone, websites, social media, paid advertising and e-mail marketing have replaced the newspaper advertisement as the preferred way to secure more customers. The same people have also began to understand that the web is a place for brand awareness and reputation building as much as it is for customer acquisition. Increasingly they are trusting the web to store and handle their data as more and more cloud services become available. It is the place business is increasingly done.

Succeed or Fail: It's Your Choice

Got your video ready? Writing new content? Tweeting like crazy? Running through SnapChat and Instagram? Still not succeeding?

If you are, great! Then you are lucky or wise enough not to need to read this post any further.... But, if things are not going according to plan, you may want to keep going. It may not solve your problems, but it will stop you wasting a lot of time expecting the "next big thing" to solve your problems.

Google has become like Microsoft

I have a friend who is obsessed with "Open Source" products and software. For him, it can do nothing wrong. He has a particular downer on Microsoft, even though he is fully accredited with them and instructs people in how to use it every day. When you boil his issues down to their essence, it comes down to the fact that he considers they overcharge for the products they provide and that they get away with it because most of us don't know any better.

But I am less concerned about Micosoft Apps than I am by Google and Facebook. At least with Microsoft, you pay your money and you get a working set of software most of the time. It's up to you to judge whether Word or Excel do the job you want them to and that they are worth the money you pay for them. Over time, they have become no more and no less than the thousands of other apps you can buy at the Apple or Google Stores.

Why do some businesses look good online and some awful? Or, to put it another way, how do you get your business to be one of the attractive ones?

One way to look at this is to imagine for a moment that your business is a person looking for Mr or Ms Right online. If your website or facbook page was a person, would anyone risk that first date with you? It is a well-known adage that you have 7 seconds to make an impact. Is this what your landing pages do? The main thing to remember is that you have to make an immediate positive impact. So let's consider how you might do that. You will find it is surprising how often the simple way of addressing things is often the right one.