With the amount of spam filling inboxes on a daily basis, it’s no wonder that people are hesitant to share their online contact details. This presents a challenge for savvy business owners who understand the importance of an online presence and the need to convert visitors to customers. Here are some ideas on how you [...]

I, along with many others, have been shouting the customer engagement mantra for a while now as online business continues to evolve. The upswing in social networking use, greater transparency through word of mouth and the ability for consumers to find virtually any information quickly and easily has meant businesses have had to begin communicating more openly with consumers if they wish to stave off negative publicity.

Google’s new Sidewiki project, recently launched in Beta, has removed any last doubt (official Google post). Sidewiki is potentially the biggest development in word of mouth marketing since instant messaging started, and a failure to take it seriously could be very costly indeed for some businesses. Sidewiki gives everyone the ability to leave comments - positive or negative - against every single webpage.

Including yours.

If you’ve been in business for a long time, you are probably used to a marketing model that revolves around pushing your sales message to as wide an audience as possible – one-to-many communication. The television commercial, magazine advertisement and billboard are all about a single voice engaged in a one-way communication with a large audience.