Social Media: Are you listening to the good stuff too?

3 November 2011

“Oh no. Have you seen what this guy said about us on Twitter?” Words to strike dread into any Marketer. “Stop what you’re doing, we need to fix this. Now” If you monitor social media mentions of your brand, you’ve probably experienced a variation of this scenario yourself. It’s not fun and depending on what’s happened it can be a small inconvenience or a major headache. Like any good social media-aware marketer this is why you monitor and you know how you need to respond. You have a strategy for dealing with negative comments and feedback – that’s great, you definitely need one. But what about your strategy for dealing with positive feedback? Huh? Come again?

Digital talent: riding the wave of change

2 October 2011

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In his post ‘Social Media requires a different perspective on talent – developing a social workforce’, Felix Wetzel referenced a comment from Brian Halligan’s (Hubspot) presentation at Dreamforce: ‘No traditional marketing skills and background are required, instead “hire people who speak digital without an accent. Hire people that blog, have twitter followers and are on G+”’ I’m sure it’s a bold and contentious statement for many, but from where I’m sitting it has merit.

Unfollow the anti-social media policy

5 July 2011

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It irritates me when I hear Twitter, Facebook et al, blamed for loss of productivity and foot in mouth faux pas by employees. That inevitably leads to the discussion regarding banning the networks from the workplace or the introduction of a lengthy social media policy within the business. Stop blaming the tools – it’s the people using them.

Social Sports: the ball is in your court

2 May 2011

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Sport is big business. The competition on the field is nothing compared to the competition off it for fandom, viewership and in this economic climate, the fan’s dollar / pound. Recognising its potential, Sports businesses are looking to social media to help them reinforce and develop their relationships with fans – and of course to broadcast their product in as many different channels as possible. Global brands such as New Jersey Nets, Manchester City and multi-billion dollar entities such as the NFL (3.1 million Facebook fans and counting) are already forging ahead with engagement via social media, including foursquare check-in competitions, Commissioner Q & As and team and player fan pages. Would this work for other, smaller sports? What would this approach bring to leagues and clubs that are fighting to raise awareness and put bums on seats?

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Customer Service via Twitter

28 July 2010

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What’s worse – not providing customer service or providing poor customer service? That’s a question I’ve pondered recently as a consumer, whilst experimenting with utilising Twitter as a means of contacting brands when I’ve needed assistance. It’s been an interesting and varied experience, something we as marketers should consider for our own businesses. You don’t need me to tell you times are changing. With the prolific adoption of social media, companies that are not monitoring brand mentions are missing a huge opportunity to serve their customers or to build / repair their reputations. The conversations about your brand are happening in the social space whether you like it or not. Making like an ostrich and sticking your head in the sand is not going to make it go away.

Top 10 It’s Digital Marketing Posts of 2009

2 January 2010

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photo credit: coquetboy And that was 2009. Hopefully yours was a good one, it certainly was for me. On reflection, much happened in 2009 – both from a personal and web perspective. So much, in fact, it’s hard to imagine it all happened in just 365 days. I felt like I learnt a lot this [...]

Social Media Innovation

9 October 2009

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Now is the time to innovate, not stick your head in the sand and wait for the storm to pass by. That is the theme of my article on social media innovation in this quarter’s edition of Figaro Digital Magazine. The takeaway thought from the article was that whilst budgets are being cut left, right [...]

Twitter killed the blogging star

21 July 2009

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Has Twitter killed long form blog writing? Is ‘traditional’ blogging already redundant in this micro-blog world? Is it convenience that makes us tweet rather than blog or is it lack of something to say? Has today’s bite sized dumbed down media reduced our attention span to the point we can’t focus beyond 140 characters anymore? [...]

Twitter statistics: UK traffic increased 22-fold in year

24 June 2009

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Robin Goad, Research Director of Hitwise UK revealed some interesting statistics regarding the growth of Twitter today. Writing on his Hitwise blog, Goad reported UK traffic to the micro-blogging site has increased 22-fold in the last 12 months. That growth has meant that Twitter.com has leapt from the 969th most visited site (May '08) in the UK to 38th (May '09). The most impressive aspect of that growth is the fact that 93% of it has come in the first five months of 2009 alone. As Goad rightly pointed out, that number in all likelihood should be even higher if you factor in the vast number of third party applications such as Seesmic, Tweetdeck and Twitterific that people use to access Twitter remotely.

Google Profiles to take on Monster.com in job market?

7 May 2009

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Depending on your Twitter Follow list, you may have already seen the buzz over changes to Google Profiles recently. Whilst the product has been around for a while (in relative obscurity), two recent announcements have fixed the spotlight firmly upon it. First off was a relatively low key announcement a few weeks ago, revealing that you could personalize your Google Profile URL to include your name (nicely termed a vanity URL). Then followed an announcement that Profiles are to start appearing in the Google search listings. Cue a whole bunch of savvy people flocking to Google to ensure they could secure their ideal vanity url before someone sharing their name (or a cybersquatter) grabbed it. The news from Danny Sullivan that Google Profiles pass PageRank might just have contributed to the rush. Since then there has been a lot of speculation regarding Google’s intent with its Profiles. A popular theory is that it is the start of a manoeuvre to take on the social network giants, Facebook and LinkedIn. There are many arguments for and against such theories, but it would certainly be quite a feat to unseat either colossus when you consider their size and integration into their users’ lives. So what else could Google Profiles become?

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