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 …

I was slightly concerned this week when listening to a crisis comms ‘expert’ talk about digital crisis planning. Why? Because there seems to be a misunderstanding when dealing with a crisis in social media all you need to do is simply adapt your crisis procedures so that responses are more ‘timely’? Yes of course speed is of the essence but to think this is the only thing we need to raise as a consideration to clients is an underestimation of how much due diligence needs to go into online crisis …

So Facebook has launched a page for PRs – about time! It’s quite staggering that we have been creating and community managing pages for clients for the past few years and yet it is only now this channel of support/advice appears.
With the rapid monetisation and policy changes of many of the tools/services that used to be available for free, this should hopefully provide a useful resource covering new policies, design features and sharing tools (I’m hoping in the same ilk as development blogs such as All Facebook and Inside Facebook …

I’m not a massive fan of social media releases (SMPR) – I have to be honest. I’ve had them pitched to me a number of times from different news agencies and to date haven’t ever issued a single one. The reps talk the talk; demonstrate the case studies (usually tech/telecomms companies –of course) and then showcase miraculous results leading to stella SEO. It looks good on paper but widespread adoption hasn’t been there because I’m not convinced bloggers want information sent to them in this way. This misunderstanding of how …