Unless you’re a Coca-Cola of this world, if you want to launch an online community, your user acquisition strategy will be key. No one will accidently stumble across your page, like it and become a lifelong fan.  You need to work, and work hard to get people to commit to you – and even that commitment can be transient if not managed correctly.
The problem is, gone are the days of social media novelty. As consumers, we are now inundated with brands in social media slowly pushing themselves further and further …

I was surprised to read blogger Mina Zaher’s piece for The Huffington Post in which she documents her bad experiences with PR’s. This is an example of the basics of PR clearly not being adhered to, and a lack of appreciation of how much this could ultimately destroy an influential relationship, not just for the individual but for the wider agency and brand it is representing. The reason I’m surprised is by now, blogger outreach should no longer be seen as a separate piece of activity that sits outside other …

So as to not replicate the plethora of blog posts covering social media predictions for 2012, I thought it would be worth listing the ten areas I’d like to see develop within the social media and digital comms industry over the next twelve months. In no particular order….
1. Twitter to be able to offer UK case studies for their advertising packages. To date the offering looks unsophisticated with limited results for brands outside of the entertainment industry
2. Brands to get a lot smarter with integrating their above-the-line and social strategies. What really …

Having been a little negative in the past about Facebook’s platform developments (some publicised, others, of course not), I have to say, things have really been hotting up over the past few week with a raft of new changes being introduced. Some of these changes have been in reaction (never a great place to be) to Google +’s introduction a few months back –  easier filtering of friends into specific categories (called ‘lists’) and targeting of messages.  Others, however are really starting to show the integral nature of Facebook’s ‘open …

Over 1 million UK users already for Google+ and despite not personally having huge social circles that really help demonstrate the correlation on everyday search results, the potential impact is still pretty staggering.  Already by optimizing your profile on Google+, as an individual, your digital footprint can be easily identified by Google. Recommended pages are increasingly visible, tailoring a search that is specific to you. Once those in your circles make the most of their accounts and Sparks are less US focused, then Google becomes less of a search engine …

Interesting stories in the papers earlier this week stating that 100,000 Britons are leaving Facebook every day. Is this something that will concern the social networking site with 600 million users worldwide? Possibly not, but it would be interesting to see what the drop off figures were, say six months ago before the press really started focusing on the issues of privacy (something they haven’t, to my mind really exploited yet).
What I did take notice of however was a teenage girl saying that she didn’t deem Facebook as relevant or …

I’ve been doing some work recently with The Times, helping them out on a feature about the issue of unemployment amongst the over 50’s. I was called upon to offer my expertise on how job seekers can use social networking to help them find work. The feature was based on a number of case studies, two of which I spent the afternoon with, coaching them through the different sites they could use and tactics they could implement. The piece is now live online (behind pay-wall I’m afraid):
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/career/article3039242.ece
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/career/article3039002.ece
It also featured in …