Des Walsh

Georges Clemenceau

I make no claim to be good, let alone excellent, at blog design or the more general field of web design. And I have great respect for good and great designers.

But what I know is that, as a business owner, the design of my blog or other web site is my responsibility and not one to be passed completely on to others, no matter how brilliant the designers and no matter how many prize-winning sites they have to boast of.

To borrow from the great French statesman, Georges Clemenceau, who is said to have remarked that war is too important to be left to generals, web design is...

I keep telling myself I won’t do it again, but there I was yesterday, having another fundamentally frustrating conversation about social media with a Baby Boomer business owner who did not really want to listen.

It started with his making a polite enquiry about what I “did” by way of business and – once I had answered – it quickly moved to his expressing what seemed to be a quite visceral hatred of anything going by the name of social media or social networking.

At least this one didn’t complete his tirade by turning on his heel and storming away, as I had experienced at a business networking event not so long ago. In fact, the one yesterday seemed to want to keep talking.

But what had brought on the tirade? Well, Facebook featured in both of those conversations. Or rather, the protagonists’ views of Facebook. Yesterday it was about the harm perceived as being done to the younger generation through being on Facebook. For the other it was the disruption of his...

Speaking to groups in my part of the world over recent months I have found there are a lot of business professionals who know about LinkedIn and may even have a profile of sorts there but are not convinced that LinkedIn represents any real business opportunity for them. Some are quite sceptical, even dismissive about the idea.

While I certainly don’t share their negative or sceptical attitudes, I think I understand. It’s fair to say Facebook, Twitter and maybe even the new one on the block, Google Plus, are more fun and more interactive. On the other hand, LinkedIn has a lot to offer – such as the averages in income, educational and decision-making levels of its members compared to the averages for other networks.

And the fact that it is still in its fundamental structure and mode of operation a trust network means that for those who use it well it can be a very powerful way of building business.

But what about locally, if you don’t live in the USA or in a big...

One of the most important factors in developing a social media strategy, for businesses large and small, is culture. It is also one of the factors most easily overlooked.

So to make sure it’s not overlooked in my free, 12 month Social Media Webinars 2011 series, I’m making business culture and social media the focus of the August webinar, next week.

Today I’ve been doing some mind maps and jotting down notes on the subject and in the process realizing it is a big enough topic to occupy quite a few webinar sessions. What follows here is a synopsis of my current thinking on the topic.

It’s often the case that more attention is paid to questions of which social media platforms – Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and so on – to use and how, when in fact the subject of culture should be given much more...