We’re always looking for examples of businesses that use social media well. Its immediacy can be both a blessing and a challenge in PR. One company that uses social media really well is Petplan. As a B2C pet insurance company, they have a great presence on Facebook, as they know that’s where their customers are. [...]

Does your company have an intranet?  How useful is it? If your intranet is a useful and time-saving portal that you visit many times a day, then you’re in the minority. An effective intranet that is functional, easy to use and has been created with the buy-in of both senior managers and employees is one [...]

This was the question that a client emailed me last week and it set me thinking.  My immediate response was, it has to be in external comms.   Then I started thinking about some companies where they have outstanding HR teams and it would sit more naturally there. I posted this question on LinkedIn and Twitter [...]

The horse meat crisis has now been running for a month. How time flies.

Back in January, this blog looked at how Tesco had responded to the initial scare and what a crisis communications plan should look like.

A question from a client made me realise the blog didn’t address internal communications, which of course is as critical as dealing with the outside world.

  We have worked with insolvency practitioners for more than 20 years.  Without doubt, the most difficult part of their job is making people redundant. It’s an extremely pressured job and when you go into a company, your legal duty is to protect the assets of people who have lent money or are owed it, [...]

Yesterday, 11 civil servants at Iain Duncan Smith’s department for work and pensions were sacked for using Twitter or Facebook. The DWP’s website says it has 5,345 employees – so 2% of the department have been reprimanded, given written and final warnings, or sacked. Is that shocking?

Here are a few of the tips and insights that I took away from Nigel Botterill’s masterclass. Give a talk about your own expertise and learn from it. Use your archive materials. Monthly newsletters need to be monthly. Information marketing has enormous potential.

Have you taken part in a webinar with half a dozen nationalities from China to Silicon Valley – and all the challenges of varying quality of internet connections? With flights grounded due to Hurricane Sandy and New York still not functioning normally, no doubt more people than ever are using this extremely useful business tool.  [...]

In my last blog, we had a brief look into the history of blogging and how bloggers are now major influencers in business:  Why B2B Can’t Ignore Blogging But what about writing a blog yourself? Taking things back to your business, the best way to control online opinion (or at least to influence it in [...]

Have you ever looked at your Facebook or Twitter profile as if you were an employer?  Would you recruit yourself? Jobhunting eBook on social media for students We have just written an eBook, From Student to Salary with Social Media, to help students use social media in their job hunting (link to book).  Employers say [...]