The blog you are reading is one of the ways that Sage is using this evolving area and combined with our twitter, facebook and youtube activity we were invited to share our thoughts to the people thinking of setting up a business in 2010.

Despite being the Digital Strategy Manager at Sage and having worked in digital for over 10 years now I still try to start my presentation planning using pen and paper. I find it slows down my brain and as a result makes me think a lot harder about what I am saying. The moment my fingers hit the keyboard I know that without that pre-planning I’ll waffle – and I think anyone who has given up time to listen to me deserves better than waffle.

Many years ago an old sales director of mine taught me a lesson. He took a sales presentation I was due to make and ripped it to pieces – each slide was trying to make multiple points, was full of text and required a lot of effort from the receiver to understand. He re-wrote it and killed 70% of the words and made sure every slide made one point and one point only. If someone who picked up the presentation could not tell what the slide meant without my explanation I had not been clear enough. Like all good lessons it hurt a little at the time but I am a better presenter for it.

Anyway the talk was very well attended, seem to be pitched at the right level and generated some great questions. The best question for me was “how do you deal with complaints and competitors moaning at you online?” At Sage we have a secret weapon (she’s called Cath) who listens out for issues and problems and then either talks directly to the person involved or directs it to the relevant part of the business. I explained that every business will have these issues – these conversations will take place – but it’s how you seek to address them that defines your commitment to your customers. We also discussed how labour intensive this area is and that its not something you can just dip in and out of – that point seemed generate a lot of head nodding.

What was most interesting for me was to see how start up businesses already have social media at the heart of their marketing planning. It’s something that a lot of very well established businesses have not even thought about. it makes me feel very positive about the future for social media.

Pete Wilson, Digital Strategy Manager