In true overdramatic-parent style, I must confess to occasionally pulling out the ‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed’ reprimand when my five year old plays up. It’s a tried and tested disciplining method that not only tells her when she’s done wrong, but in a clipped, scathing way. No wasted words. No pulled punches.

Now, on to the reason for this blog.

Many of you will have seen the very, very funny and brilliantly caustic Twitter profile for Shippam’s Paste earlier this week – a brand I literally knew nothing about. Read More »

Business Insider recently reported comments made by Buddy Media CEO, Mike Lazerow, whose prediction for 2012 is all about the quick and easy microblogging platform Tumblr.

One of the reasons he cited for that growth is that the Obama campaign has recently launched a very nice Tumblr blog as an additional to all of its other social media activity as part of the 2012 presidential campaign. Read More »

Despite some recent success enjoyed by big brand advertisers—like Ford’s spokespuppet ‘Doug’ campaign—Facebook is forecast to capture only 6.4% of total online ad spending this year.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Ford spent more than $95m promoting its ‘Doug’ campaign on TV and print, but less than 5% of that was spent on Facebook, which garnered 43,000 “likes”. Of ‘Doug’s’ Facebook fans, 61% said they were more likely to consider buying a Ford Focus, the car it was advertising. Read More »

Forget doing barrel rolls… And the fact that Sir Martin Sorrell has told us “not to underestimate the power of Google or online”…

This is old news and, for my money, the big announcement of the week in search is all about keeping things fresh. Read More »

LinkedIn have been beavering away over the past few months making subtle improvements to their channel. The two stand out innovations are the ‘Ads by LinkedIn Members’ and the company status update.

One of the most pressing conundrums in B2B social marketing is working out ways to seed the content you’re creating into places where people are genuinely interested and grateful to receive it. Creating compelling content with the right company isn’t the problem; trying to share it in an organic way without looking like you’re spamming is. The process is time consuming and very manual.

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The Associated Press has released new social media guidelines on how staffers should handle re-tweets (tips/guidelines from the Guardian and the BBC are also worth checking). Basically for the AP it comes down to not retweeting anything with an opinion. Doesn’t this slightly defeat the point of retweets or is that just me?

When someone says something that is interesting or controversial you want to share that with your followers. That’s the nature of social media and Twitter particularly. Read More »

In the connected world of 2011 it appears that Generation Y is developing a new set of values when looking for that ideal employer.  Glancing over a recently commissioned study by Cisco (the Connected World Technology Report) it highlighted that nearly 35% of the 3000 young professionals interviewed prioritised social media freedom, device flexibility, and work mobility over salary when accepting a job offer.

They also found that more than a third of young professionals felt it was their right to work remotely and access Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.
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As The X Factor entered its fourth week of live shows (the Halloween theme), it was the week for surprises.  We also continued to see a levelling out of the final 10 contestants social media profiles, with each contestant gaining an average of 10,000 fans across Twitter and Facebook during week 4, compared to an average of 12,500 in week 3.

Some of the surprises mentioned include as Kelly being too ill to fly back from LA and former X Factor winner Alexandra Bourke stepping in as guest judge.  The resignation of one of The Risk (Ashley J. Baptiste), and former Nu Vibe contestant coming back onto live shows to join the boy band (Ashford Campbell).  Girl band Rhythmix having to change their name due to a trademark with a charity of the same name, they are now called Little Mix.  Last but not least, Week 4 saw two of the popular contestants from The Girls category in the bottom two (Misha B and Sophie Habibis), with Sophie Habibis sent packing. Read More »