Posts Tagged ‘Fuzion PR’

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Grace Under Pressure

May 5, 2010

Grace Under Pressure

Thank God for the Good Guys!

Many of you will have read the “Credit Control Warrior” piece I wrote having being inspired by the behaviour of a particular businessman, Famous.

Basically, if you read the piece you will have learnt that not only did he not pay his bill but he felt this was quite funny, the joke was on us. He laughed in my face saying “We would never get paid!”

The joke is on all of us who do our best at all times to behave honourably, pay our bills and behave honestly. If you think about it we are all subsidising these guys.

The circumstances of a changed economic climate have worked against many of us but this does not stop the honourable guys still behaving properly even when they just cannot pay. Once a gentleman, always a gentleman.

As long as someone who is under pressure communicates with you, realises that you are out of pocket as a result and will try their best to sort you out I have no issue. Unfortunately we have a few clients who have been caught in the storm and thankfully they have not stopped being good decent people.

I Salute You

I Salute You

This morning I received an email from one such client who has been doing his utmost to sort us out on an unpaid bill. At all times he has been upfront and honest, he always returns calls, he always appreciates that we are out of pocket as a result of his misfortune and he has done his best to give us a few quid whenever it is available.

The email:

“Hope you enjoyed the long weekend.

Just wanted to let you know that I’m transferring €xxxx off the account in the morning – some modest funds came in from the sale of the leasehold but we couldn’t have money come in and not deal with your account.  You’ve been beyond fair and I sincerely want to clear the account faster than we have been up to this point.  This will leave us with a balance of just over €xxxx and I’ll increase the monthly payments on that.

Once again, thank you for your patience and understanding”

This is what I would call Grace Under Pressure.

I salute you.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion Communications

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Posted in Irish Economy, Marketing, Recession, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Get it off your chest Online!

April 20, 2010

Have you found yourself in the frustrating position of getting absolutely nowhere with a complaint?

Now this could be on a small scale in a corner shop, at a restaurant where you have had a lousy meal or it could be against one of the big guys. The old saying goes that a bad experience travels quickly with word of mouth as we do tend to share our frustrations with friends, loved ones and anyone that will listen! If anyone is really annoyed about something they tend to share it with a lot of people.

TripAdvisor Logo

TripAdvisor

Spreading the frustration has now got much faster and easier and with a much bigger reach with the onset of the web and the powerful free tools available including Trip Advisor, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs.

These tools can work for you in that they can help get rid of that frustration and genuinely hurt the culprits but they can also help to actually resolve your issue to a satisfactory conclusion.

If your issue is with the “big guys” your activity online can really work in your favour and help to get that proper attention that you have been looking for.

The “big guys” and a lot of the smaller companies are very conscious of their reputations and are often carefully tracking what is being said about them online using tools such as Google Alerts and Twitter searches.

To demonstrate this point I will share with you a small real life example of how this worked for me.  I recently had a problem with one of our national phone service suppliers and was very quickly getting nowhere fast. After nearly 12 months of total frustration and the realisation that this problem was not being sorted out by the normal means I decided to write about my issue in my personal blog, carefully naming the offending company in a way that, if they were paying attention they would definitely notice!

Having completed my blog post I then shared the blog with my Social Media Community, my Facebook contacts, my Twitter followers and my connections and groups on Linked In.

All I had to do then was wait and see if my nothing to lose experiment would actually work ..

Within a few hours not only did I have a bucket load of responses from other people with similar complaints but I also received a call from the offending company in response to my blog issue!

Not in response to my complaint but to my blog!  To be fair to the guy calling he wanted to sort out my problem and I was able to take him through it in detail and within days the whole issue was sorted and I managed to negotiate a fair rebate, which I was told was impossible up until then.

Was this a company eager to satisfy unhappy customers or one that didn’t want to be “red-faced” online? – to be honest I didn’t really care, I finally managed to solve a problem that had been dragging on forever.

The lesson in all of this is that if you require it, you have a very powerful and effective voice available to you online if you choose to use the  tools available , to make your point.

However this can be a double edged sword!

Exactly the same can apply to your own business and you should pay attention to what is being said about you online.  Use the simple to use tools such as Google Alerts and Twitter Search and hear first hand about the good, the bad and the ugly!

If it’s good then highlight the unprompted testimonials on your website and in your newsletters and presentations. If it’s bad or it gets ugly then deal with the problem and don’t be afraid to share how you solved the issue online. Use the issue as an opportunity to show you genuinely care about your customers.

There is no hiding place online!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion Communications

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Posted in Customer Care, Irish Economy, Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing | Leave a Comment »

Protected: Credit Control Warrior

April 10, 2010

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Posted in Irish Economy, Recession | Enter your password to view comments.

Businesses Still Opening despite the odds ..

March 29, 2010
Karizma - Turkish Barbers

Karizma - Turkish Barbers

Despite the odds new businesses are still opening up in the middle of this economic climate.

What is this due to ?

Is this an entrepreneurial spirit that just cannot be crushed? – unique individuals, who despite bucket loads of advice not to do so, struggles to raise finance from powerless and frightened bankers,  little incentive to even bother trying and poor support from any government bodies – and they still decide to risk their money without a safety net and take the ultimate plunge and open up a “new business”.

Thank God – the landlords, the shop fitters, the signage guys, the staff, the local councils and the revenue all benefit & maybe the odd Marketing & PR Company!

I absolutely celebrate inside when I pass these new stores/businesses.

Long live the entrepreneurial spirit, it won’t be broken!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion Communications

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Posted in Irish Economy, Irish Politics, Recession | 3 Comments »

Students “Doing the Business”

March 29, 2010

CIT Student Prize for InnovationI had the honour and pleasure of being one of the judges at the Cork Schools Enterprise Finals at CIT in Cork this month. This initiative was sponsored by Cork County and City Enterprise Boards.

It basically consisted of transition year students starting a business and running it as a project as part of their development. In my section I was judging the City entrants with Natasha Lynch from Essential French and we had 6 good contestants to review. It was a pity there weren’t more entrants from the City but I guess the schools are quite busy these days – I would recommend it to any school as it seemed like a fabulous experience for all of them.

It was incredible meeting these enthusiastic students, who showed us their business plans, their ideas, their “inventions”. They shared with us their real-life experiences including “power struggles” and disagreements, disappointments and successes along the way. They poured their energy into all of their projects and already you could see how these unique experiences will stand to all of them.

To all of those students, their teachers, CIT  and the Cork City and County Enterprise Boards – I salute you!

To the winners (which from my point of view was everyone who participated and learnt valuable life lessons) well done guys, you deserved it. To the guys from my old school Spioraid Naoimh, keep up the good work – next year you might be in the prizes!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion Communications

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Posted in Marketing | 1 Comment »

How do I find New Customers Easily?

January 24, 2010

I deliberately changed the heading I originally had for this article as I felt many of you may just switch off and not bother reading any further!

While that may not be a fair thing to do it is actually not too bad as the title I have chosen for the article is actually very accurate. However the title I had originally chosen was “Social Media is a form of free advertising – Use it!”

Already as I had feared many of you could be saying – I can’t even use a computer so I’m not even going to read this!

Please bear with me and read on. It’s easier than you think and this is a unique opportunity for your business. Many people are already using the different forms of Social Media and are successfully spreading the word about their business and winning new customers in the process.

Consider the different Social Media tools as forms of free advertising, free publicity and a free way to spread the word about your store or your brand. How can you ignore it?

You owe it to yourself to at least understand how it all works, how it could work for you and your business and then decide whether it is something you need to learn or something you need someone to do for you. Most importantly understand how some of your competitors are using these tools and the advantages they are gaining in the process.

Facebook

Facebook for Business

A small piece of information that might help to hold your interest – There are over 1,110,000 registered users of Facebook in Ireland, all over 18. You might assume that most of these are quite young? Nearly 500,000 of these users are 30 and over. My guess is a lot of your customers are busy using Facebook!

Some of you will already have discovered the power of the different social media for your business but for most it is a fabulous awareness opportunity just waiting to be discovered.

Let’s start with the basics – What exactly is Social Media?

They are the tools available on the web for socialising with other people online. There are many such tools and all totally free you will be glad to hear. The most popular and most useful of these are Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

You don’t need to have a website to use any of these tools, just an email address. If you have a website they can be used to bring more traffic to it.

I will try my best to explain each of these in the most simplest of terms:

Facebook (www.facebook.com) is a powerful free resource for communicating with individuals and groups. At the heart of it you sign yourself up as an individual, build up a network of friends sharing messages, pictures and even video. You can also become a fan of business pages, which could include your favourite shops, charities etc. You can also set up a business page for your own business and encourage your customers to sign up as fans – through this you can add news about new products, show visuals of new collections, announce sales and even invite your fans to an event such as a sale.

I strongly recommend Facebook for any business in the hospitality or retail sector. We encourage all of our clients in these sectors to set up their presence on Facebook and to use it proactively. For example Starbucks have over 5.5million fans worldwide on their Facebook page, that’s a lot of coffee drinkers!

Twitter Logo

Twitter for business

Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a totally different beast. Basically you can set up an account or identity for yourself or your business and you then choose to follow others or let them follow you. You can then publish short messages referred to as ‘tweets’, which can be seen by the people following you and vice versa. For me quite honestly I am not totally sold on Twitter but I do see the sense in deliberately following businesses or journalists that may be of relevance to you and learn what they are writing about.

LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) is quite different to the others as it is a business to business form of online networking. On LinkedIn you set up your profile and from here you can invite others to connect with you. With LinkedIn you can normally see quite detailed information about where people are working and the position they hold. LinkedIn comes to life through the ‘Groups’ facility. You can join groups on LinkedIn such as your local Chamber, trade Groups or different interest groups. You can also set up a group yourself and invite others to join. For example I set up a group called Spend Ireland, which encourages people to spend their money in Ireland. These groups can be excellent for discussing topics and finding out information. Another feature of LinkedIn is the ability to register personal recommendations for your contacts and vice versa and you can also request introductions through your connections.

You can spend a lot of precious time on each of these so are they worth it?

Must – My own view is that you absolutely must be using Facebook proactively for your business as a store or as a brand. Make sure you complete your profile and regularly keep it fresh with news, updates, offers, visuals and comments. Let your customers know that you have a Facebook page and encourage them to sign up. A vital point to remember is that it is a form of ‘Social Media’ – try not to be too formal, you will only turn people off. Learn as much as you can by joining other peoples pages and watch how they are communicating news and offers. If you feel you do not have the time arrange for someone to do this for you.

LinkedIn Logo

LinkedIn for business

Maybe – I would try LinkedIn and Twitter once I was up and running on Facebook.

One final tip for you – If you have a website make it easy for people to share it with their contacts on the different social media by adding an ‘Add This’ sharing button to your website. Check out www.addthis.com to learn how. If you have a website and are also using Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn direct them to these pages by adding buttons to the site.

I know that all of this can seem complicated and can be a little daunting but I promise you will get there one step at a time at you will win new customers for you business. What are you waiting for?

Greg Canty is a partner in Fuzion Communications, providing Marketing Consultancy, PR and Graphic Design and Web Optimisation services.

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Posted in Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Web Marketing | Leave a Comment »

Blackberry Problems

January 3, 2010
Blackberry - Rollerball Problems

Blackberry - Rollerball Problems

I heard before about a blog that was written by a guy about terrible problems that he was having with his Dell computer, which resulted in a huge reaction from others and eventually a reaction from Dell itself.

I am having a simple problem with my Blackberry, the rollerball is sticking. Ok, small problem but I can’t check texts, emails without spending ages repeatedly rolling and rolling and rolling.

Of course I popped into an O2 store who told me that there was a problem but it would have to be sent away for a week for repair. I have too much information on it and use it too much. I will probably be given a new one but you always end up with a huge pain in the backside of transferring contacts and losing some photos etc.

The friendly guy in the O2 store “off the record” suggested using a pin to poke out the rollerball and then use some cleaning materials on it. I failed miserably at my attempts to squeeze the rollerball out.

I should have known … I had the same issue with the previous model and still agreed to switch to this one!

I put my trust in a Google search to realise that loads or people are having the same problem – surely Blackberry know that this is a huge defect but are not dealing with it officially.

I have decided to switch to an iphone but as an experiment I am writing and tagging this blog to see if I get any reaction from Blackberry!

Blackberry are you listening to what is being said about your products online?

Let’s see !

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion Communications, Marketing & PR

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Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

2009 – The Ultimate Business Boot Camp?

December 22, 2009

2009 – The Ultimate Business Boot Camp

Pretty much anyone who survived business in 2009 has had to dig deep, start operating really efficiently, offering good service and value and genuinely appreciating their customers. It has been normal and a matter of course to demand the same from suppliers, looking for value and quality service from everyone. Business practices have had to be sharpened in every area – to survive the services provided have had to be excellent and no longer just ok.

We have learnt more about ourselves this year I suspect, our resilience, our adaptability, our ability to deal with adversity and worry, our ability to work even harder, our customer knowledge, our staff motivational skills without writing cheques, our negotiating ability and even our credit control skills!

Has 2009 been the ultimate Business Boot Camp?

My dad was in the US army for 2 years and he always talks about how the Boot Camp period at the beginning was absolutely terrible but he will always say how is was totally valuable and necessary.

While it was incredibly challenging and really tough we are now better equipped than ever to face the future and reap the rewards of the upturn when it comes. I look forward to it!

Greg Canty is a partner in Fuzion Communications

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Budget 2010 – The Rewind

December 10, 2009
Brian Linehan - Budget 2010

Budget 2010 - Brian Linehan

All as expected really, with the pre-press, various leaks etc all preparing everyone for what pretty much happened.

Happy? – I guess being selfish about it we all examine how it affects us personally and on this occasion there were no direct hits to the ship! If we drink more than we use diesel then we are making money! That was a strange one that seemed to catch everyone by surprise.

Whichever way you look at it a lot of money will be taken from circulation, which will effect everyone both as private individuals and those in business. This has affected pretty much all of us this year already – I wonder in real terms how much less money was in circulation this year than before? It must be a huge figure.

The real budget headline for me was one of ‘Rewind’, the Government trying to take back what it probably gave away too easily in better times. It always amazes me how easy it is to get used to extra money, you seem to automatically adjust your lifestyle and mostly to the extent that you have a ‘new level’ of necessities.

Try taking it back after! Different story altogether.

So whether we think the public service or those on welfare are overpaid or not, this is real people we are talking about who are all waking up this morning contemplating significant financial adjustments. The unions will no doubt huff and puff and end up blowing nothing down, just raise a level of anger and frustration with a lot of people. At the end of the day it will be real people who will be really affected, some worse than others.

Today spare a thought for those who do not have a cushion of excess income and can comfortably take an income hit and as a result will be under serious pressure. Try to forget about all the public v private sector stuff, it does none of us any good, these are all our neighbours.

Rewinding is much tougher than fast forwarding.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion Communications

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It will get better when we stop saying it will get worse.

November 30, 2009

Brian Cowen - Fianna Fail

Getting Better

It will get worse before it gets better!

What was he thinking when he said this?

I am talking about Brian Cowen of course, the leader of our government, the leader of our country.   I consider myself to be one of the very lucky ones in the last week with the floods. Except for a leaky roof in our office and a lack of running water, no floods and pretty much business as usual.

It is difficult to empathise with people who have had their houses flooded and their livelihoods effectively ended or at least seriously threatened due to the floods. What is it like to be exhausted after days of battling with flood water, struggling with no water to drink or wash, trying to clean up and rescue what you can from the debris? I can only imagine.

In that position I imagine I want to hear things like: “Don’t worry, you will be looked after”, “We will have it all sorted really soon”, not “It will get worse before it gets better” – that must make your hole seem ever deeper. Hope or despair?

Come on Brian, have some cop on will you? Bring people hope not despair. Besides managing how about leading for a change?

You made the same comments after the last budget – why do you think most of the country is half petrified about the economy and their livelihoods. Confidence and positivity will bring optimism, will loosen the purse strings and assist recovery not “It will get worse before it gets better”

It will only get better when we stop talking about it getting worse..

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion Communications, Dublin & Cork

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Posted in Irish Economy, Irish Politics, PR, Recession | 2 Comments »

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