As social media professionals we know; when evaluating the success of an online community, it should all be about the level of engagement and not about the number of ‘Likes’ and/or followers – but the truth is, that rightly or wrongly numbers matter.

This is the first thing clients see when they are searching for a benchmark of success, the first indication of what they would naturally infer as popularity and the first thumbs up of a community that seems to be well run – people have said ‘yes’ …

I had an interesting meeting with an experiential/alternative reality agency today who develop group events all based on unique, game playing experiences. These could be bespoke interactive experiences based on treasure/scavenger hunts to fully blown immersive events where the player is not sure who the other participants are and who are part of the game itself. Although I’m pretty sceptical about the number of people who actually participate in these experiences, the amount of PR and buzz that is generated means that the brand/organisation who have commissioned such activity get …