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 …

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’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 …

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 …

Having been recruiting for various social media roles over the past couple of months I find it incredible the CV is still considered a credible descriptor of a person’s employment history. No more! I refuse to look at these pieces of paper which are crying out for a role in digital comms and yet show no passion for the medium these candidates want to work in day in, day out. No URL’s – nothing, just an email address.  So, to the humble Google search, then LinkedIn…Twitter. Ok obvious but it …

So this week I got all legal and attended a briefing on the ASA’s extended digital remit which, if you weren’t aware of already, comes into effect on the 1st March. To date, company websites have been excluded from ASA regulations which basically means they can say what they want about their products and services without validation. This is the first thing that is being addressed. Non paid for space (ie: social media channels) which are under the control of a brand/organisation as well as ‘earned media’ (user generated content) …

I’m feeling pretty powerful at the moment with a word- of-mouth influencer score of just under 300,000. Actually this figure is ridiculous but it certainly acts as an trigger to start wielding my opinion around on new  ‘have a complaint (rant)’ site Gri.pe.
According to their About Page Gri.pe:  “lets you share public praise or complaints that get sent to the business for response, while being spread by your friends, followers and beyond!” – basically it allows you a very public forum to moan in the hope that you’ll get some …

Working in both PR and digital comms I have been involved with a number of blogger relations campaigns throughout the years. The most recent one I’ve been involved with has been for one of my clients, ‘make mine Milk’, where we invited mummy (and, not to be forgotten daddy) bloggers down to the London School of Coffee for a morning of Barista training and low fat semi-skimmed milk discussion.  After chatting to many of the attendees about how they liked being approached by PRs, plus some of their worst PR …

After revelations that Yell.com were ‘faking’ 1 in 8 of reviews on their review platform Trusted Places by incentivising staff to write them, it got me thinking about the importance of review sites and how users really rely on them to make informed decisions. The question is, when it comes to review sites have we ever really taken some stranger’s opinion as gospel – the answer is no. Whether it’s an online publication who is reviewing a product as part of a PR process or if it’s a review left …

Horray – now do you believe Twitter is a viable communications channel? Not only do the new developments make Twitter.com more inviting, they open up new opportunities for brands to create a personality for themselves which is not just inferred through the tone of their tweets. It’s the larger icon, the images and video – all housed in one destination. ‘A Facebook feed’ I hear you cry! Yes, there’s no doubt, but what’s interesting is when individuals pull in brand content to the right hand column of the their own …