Impact Online is a fresh new company set up in Glasgow by me – Kim McAllister – to help companies take advantage of social media tools and make the most of their websites. We’ll manage the content and monitor all the feedback for you, saving you precious time to get on with running your business, safe in the knowledge that your online reputation is being cared for.

I discovered the power of Facebook to engage with my readers while I was working as a magazine editor. Within a day of setting up the magazine’s page, 100 readers were talking directly to me, telling me their opinions and suggesting topics for future issues. As the number of fans grew, I realised I had a large, engaged community willing to contribute to features, test new products and voice their opinions. Any business exists to please its customers, so this is a very powerful tool.

The more I experimented with social media, the more I realised its effectiveness as a marketing tool. From finding leads in South America for a whisky supplier through LinkedIn to using Twitter as a news feed for the customers of bars and restaurants, I found that engaging online was yielding real results.

I’m now a freelance journalist and the director of Impact Online – a company which takes a journalistic approach to online content. Anyone can tweet about their breakfast or gibber in a blog. We think the discipline of a trained journalist – the ability to tell a good story, find the angle and write good quality copy – means that you can really grab your customers’ attention and – perhaps more importantly – attract the eye of new ones.