This post is provided by our partner the Future Foundation, the leading consumer futures business.

The power of social networking – and the important position it has come to play in so many of our lives – has given rise to an entirely new discipline within marketing: that of the influencer.

To quantify consumers’ online influence, we created an index using our nVision Global research and then used it to gain an insight into who these people really are. First, we looked at how closely a selection of variables correlated with two statements: “People often come to me for advice in general” and “I’m always telling friends/family about new products and services I’ve discovered”. The variables in question included key factors like the propensity to share links on social networking websites, the size of personal friendship networks, willingness to talk about brands, self-perception of influence and strength of attitudes towards word-of-mouth.  By conducting several stages of factor analysis, people were then categorised as low/medium/high in terms of their influence. [Creative Commons image by Felipe Bachomo]

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Nice idea. Hopefully we’ll see more of this in the UK. Reuters reports on six Republican White House hopefuls who took part in the first presidential debate on Twitter.

The event gave those taking part the opportunity to raise their profile and build their social media following. Read More »

Google+: people not spending as long on it as Facebook

We know lots of people have joined Google+ – ten million, according to the most recent official figures, probably almost double that according to various estimates – but how much are they using it?

According to Experian Hitwise, a lot less than Facebook. Users are spending almost four times as long on Facebook compared to Google+.

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Content platforms evolve, splitting and dissipating audiences as they do. This has been happening in the UK ever since William Caxton’s printing press put the town crier out of work. Fast forward to Channel 4 competing against ITV for advertisers in 1982; the rise of 24-hour news channels; then the competition from digital TV, web; and today from mobile.

Digital technology sped up the process so fundamentally — allowing ad networks to offer ever-cheaper inventory from proliferating aggregators, leading to ‘low-rent’ click-throughs. These make the media buyer look good by driving down the cost per click. Read More »

This is quite cool. A nice bit of quick and clean Twitter fun  courtesy of the people at data visualisation firm http visual.ly You simply sign in with your Twitter name and it will generate you an infographic based on your use of Twitter. Read More »

It is being reported that Twitter is close to finalising an $800m funding deal with as much as half of the cash being used to cash out current investors and some staff. The latest round of funding pushes Twitter’s value to $8bn, which is more than double the $3.7bn it was valued at in December.

The new round of funding comes as Twitter axes a number of product staff. Four staff are parting company with Twitter signalling the new broom of Jack Dorsey whose return to the company is as part of an effort to shake it up and get it focused on growth and product development. Read More »

I had the opportunity to talk to Duncan Cleverley, Hastings District Media Relations Officer, who is one of the contributors of the Hastings Police Twitter account to find out how he’s found using the channel of communication and the role of social media within the law.

Emily: It’s great to see that Hastings Police have recently got involved in using Twitter, what was the reasoning behind this?

Duncan: Hastings Police along with many Districts in Sussex Police have recently started to get involved in social media. A big part of effective Police work is being engaged with the public, listening to them and working with them. Social media connects us with more people and gives us an opportunity to engage with them in a way we couldn’t before.

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More and more brands are dedicating increasing amounts of time to building their fan base on Facebook. This comes as no surprise considering the incredible influence that Facebook has with consumers, who are spending more and more of their time on the platform, interacting with friends and brands and sharing experiences with each other.

In fact, Facebook’s dominance in the activity landscape of users is leading brands to invest heavily in creating Facebook based platforms, hoping to leverage the reach of users’ social graphs and as a result – more agencies are developing tactics to generate traffic to their clients’ brand pages and accumulate a high number of ‘Likes’. Read More »

Well this might come in handy as more and more of us play around with Google+.

So if you want to get around Facebook and save yourself some time this handy little video shows you how to transfer your Facebook friends to Google+ all at once. Read More »

Nice little infographic here form e-Dialog on the use of mobile email and what it means for marketers. Read More »