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Monthly Archives: April 2009
UK small business case study no. 2: Saronti
In this, the second of a series of mini case studies, I talked to Karine Large of Saronti, producers of personalised family books. The business was started in 2006 and much of its success is down to social media, according to Karine.
What made you decide to use social media, and how did you start?
"We started exploring social media in our second year in business – we needed exposure but had no budget for marketing. I have a background in web design so I already had a good knowledge of what was out there and I also received excellent advice from Maz Nadjm who I'd worked with in the past.
eTips – why ratings, reviews and recommendations matter
This month's eTips is about the currency of the social web – ratings, reviews and recommendations. Plus the usual round up of blogs posts, news and other ephemera that's caught my eye recently.
Here it is on the web or you could always subscribe to get it each month by email if you wished…
What I get up to on Twitter …
A glance back through my Twitter conversations the last couple of weeks reminds me once more why it's become a mainstay of my working day. A few highlights:
In preparation for a presentation, I asked for examples of UK small businesses using social media successfully, and received several good recommendations, two of which resulted in mini case studies for my blog. The first is already up, and thanks to the retweets this blog received the most page views it's ever had in a single day I discovered Retweetist as a tool for measuring retweets and finding interesting people to follow by topic I found yet more interesting authorities on the social web, such as Jeremiah Owyang I shared my love of blackbirds, got hotel recommendations for a forthcoming weekend in London, commiserated with someone feeling unwell, discussed on what the Abruzzo earthquake might mean for organised crime, retweeted a number of informative and/or entertaining tweets from others and responded to enquiries about First Friday Lewes
Whatever did I used to do before Twitter?!
UK small business social media case study no. 1: Paganum Farmers Market
This is the first of a series of mini case studies on UK small businesses that are using social media, how they got started with it, how it’s working for them and what advice they would give to others.
Paganum Produce Ltd describes itself as an online farmers market supplying meat and produce from family farms and small artisan firms in the Yorkshire Dales direct to the consumer and trade outlets nationwide. The word ‘paganum’ is Latin for ‘rural tradition’.
Paganum’s Chris Wildman admits he’s a gadget lover and has always been an early adopter of technology – so when he and partner Heather Mitchell started their business in 2007, launching into social media channels seemed a natural decision.
