The emperor's new social strategy

When it comes to social marketing, it seems that small businesses in the UK just don't get it. Despite all the buzz surrounding social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, a recent study by the Forum of Private Business discovered that many SME's are struggling to see any real value in their inclusion in the marketing mix.

According to the survey of 5,800 small to medium-sized businesses in the UK, around 21% of them rated social networking platforms as "not useful", whilst 6% claimed that they were "useless". So is social marketing really just a box of nail-holes, or are UK businesses just doing it wrong?

The Role of Social Networks in Buying Decisions

I was a little disappointed when I read about Gartner's report on the impact of social networking on consumer buying decisions. I had hoped for an incredible insight into consumer behaviour that would revolutionise e-commerce as we know it, but it did little more than confirm what Gladwell had already observed in The Tipping Point.