How do you make your business sparkle?

by Victoria Tomlinson March 8, 2010
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What does your business do to keep finding new ideas and staying ahead of your competitors? 
I’ve been picking up all sorts of tips in the last two weeks.  First was a new Innovation Club at Bradford University School of Management – I was asked to help get this going.  We started with a small dinner [...]

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‘Dirty money’ needs to count for research academics

by Victoria Tomlinson February 22, 2010
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The government is on a mission to get universities and businesses working together.
In October last year, Lord Mandelson spoke at the CBI’s summit on higher education, saying “….. universities will have to deepen and diversify their sources of non-public income through commercialization of their teaching or research expertise …..”
While I think every business in the [...]

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Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

by Victoria Tomlinson February 15, 2010
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Why has this phrase become so widely used and accepted in everyday life and relationships – yet its principles overlooked in the workplace?
Michael Skapinker of the FT last week wrote about the continuing lack of women at senior levels in the workplace and covers the current debates on when and how women will make it [...]

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Toyota needs ‘emotional’ leadership

by Victoria Tomlinson February 7, 2010
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Toyota drivers ‘should not panic’.  That was what Miguel Fonseca said at 7.50am on Friday morning. Painful.
Toyota UK’s managing director admitted the Prius hybrid had brake problems, but there was no need for a recall.
The interview was unconvincing and as part of a crisis management strategy, hopeless. Coming on the back of sticking accelerators, the company needed [...]

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Selling makes me cringe

by Victoria Tomlinson January 25, 2010
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‘Marketing is for failed sales people’.   I heard this comment at a client’s this week and was both shocked and intrigued at the same time.
Coming from a product driven company with a highly professional and driven sales team, this is apparently how many sales people regard marketing.
Selling is a hot topic for businesses in the [...]

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Should children be put into the PR limelight?

by Victoria Tomlinson January 16, 2010
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Mary Portas this morning gives her usual forthright views on brand David Cameron in the Telegraph.
In the midst of this she puts her view that Cameron should keep his children out of the public eye.
“As far as his general image goes, it’s also time Cameron stopped banging on about his family and the “I feel [...]

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Should we let ‘Techies’ win the battle of blogs?

by Carol Arthur January 14, 2010
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Website designers – the techies – say that your blog should not link to other blogs. These techies are understandably focused on driving traffic to websites and say  that if you include links to other people’s blogs (from your blog), then it is actually driving traffic away from your site.
But blogs are about communities so [...]

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Who should Twitter – and why?

by Victoria Tomlinson January 3, 2010
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Stephen Fry has again set the debate going on who should Twitter and about what.  Yesterday he announced he is taking another (temporary) break to write his autobiography.
Steve Davies (an online communications expert) has produced a list of all the journalists he could find using Twitter.  I’ve used the Christmas break to go through the [...]

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Social media for businesses

by Victoria Tomlinson January 1, 2010
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Rob Brown’s book, Public Relations and the Social Web, is packed with information, ideas and thoughts for both the novice and the expert in this area.  Although aimed specifically at those working in PR, I am going to recommend this to our clients – it is a very good overview of what’s going on and [...]

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Putting a pdf document on your website

by Victoria Tomlinson December 16, 2009
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We are working with Arena Group on a small campaign to encourage more lawyers to store documents electronically and destroy their old paper files.
I’ve been doing some research for this and can’t help noting an irony. I found a number of reports on business attitudes to electronic document storage, such as the one by [...]

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