E-CONSULTANCY.COM — In March the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported that 700,000 businesses in the UK had active accounts. and across the blogosphere and in company boardrooms the platform is being breathlessly talked up as the future of online customer communication. But, hyperbole aside, how well does Twitter work as a channel for reaching customers and generating sales? With one or two exceptions (most notably Dell, which has claimed several million dollars in revenue from Twitter), few businesses have used Twitter to drive significant sales. Studying the Twitter profiles of some major UK online retailers and analysing available data suggests that, as far as business is concerned,Twitter is yet to live up to its hype...

E-CONSULTANCY.COM — Why is the iPhone so popular with developers? One word: money. The App Store is a developer's lottery ticket. All it takes is the right app at the right time and fortune can be yours. The widely-publicized stories of developers who struck it rich with iPhone apps arguably did more for iPhone development in the early days than any developer-oriented sales pitch from Apple or Steve Jobs. It has been somewhat difficult, however, to find the same sort of stories about developers who struck it rich with Android apps. Until now...

E-CONSULTANCY.COM — According to Facebook, there are now more than 3m active Facebook Pages on the world's most popular social network. A growing number of them belong to businesses that are trying to tap into Facebook's massive audience. For some of those businesses, a Facebook Page represents a significant investment, and for those with a substantial number of fans, a significant asset. But having a web presence on Facebook also creates some challenges. One of them: determining whether or not to promote the company website or the company's Facebook Page...

E-CONSULTANCY.COM — I recently wrote a post where I revisited a number of social media statistics, which attracted a lot of attention. Among all of the feedback one trend stood out: people need more information about return on investment from social media. So I’ve decided to bat a few things around, as it’s quite a complex subject. We've written extensively about social media ROI in the past, and have also highlighted some social media engagement metrics that should help you. And now, I’ve gathered various opinions from some of the British heavyweights in social media, as everybody has different thoughts about this particular area...

E-CONSULTANCY.COM — Occasionally, firms, especially larger brands, choose to build forums into their websites as part of their marketing strategy. The idea is that the social network or forum will attract new and repeat visitors, build brand loyalty and recognition, boost your organic SEO and increase trust in your website. Without a doubt, a successful forum can do that, but it can also be a huge amount of work and a gamble, since most forum attempts fail. Recently, a few of my clients asked about forums and so I’ve been considering best practice. Here are my ten golden rules...