Last week we heard that multi-admin access was coming for Google+ in Q1 2012 and this week Google is highlighting how some people are already using it including how all the candidates in the 2012 US presidential race have agreed to participate in live hangouts with voters on television.

Interesting  to see that already every single major league baseball team has a Google+ page including the likes of 2011 World Series Champion the St. Louis Cardinals and their beaten opponents the Texas Rangers. Read More »

I heard Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, on Radio 4 this week talking about Wikipedia’s problem in attracting a more diverse set of editors. Typically post-graduates, nine in ten of its 36,000 volunteer contributors are male and the average age is 26. This lack of variety means the content is not as ‘culturally rich’ as it could be, she said. Read More »

There seems to be a spate of terminal illness hitting the search marketing industry recently. Last week, I wrote that SEO is dead, but search marketing is alive and kicking.

This week, I read that link building is dead and has been usurped by social sharing.

In his article, Debanjan Ghosh, states that inbound links are worthless unless they’re on the top authority websites in your niche and says he no longer builds links into his sites. He would rather have “50 likes and 50 retweets than 100 links from junk sites like article directories and bookmarking sites”. Read More »

If Sherlock Holmes were around today, he’d often be found chillaxing around the cafes of Baker Street, necking cups of espresso by the bucketload, muttering under his breath about the price of Madame Tussauds tickets, tinkering with his iPad – and, despite himself, instinctively sensing which brands felt ‘right’.

Being Sherlock Holmes, and therefore the authority on everything, he’d know that tone of voice and personality used to be qualities mainly associated with copy and art direction, but now they could be attributed to the way a brand ‘feels’ using digital touchpoints too.

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About 40% of UK social media users are “opportunists,” following brands out of self-interest for vouchers and competitions, and care more for “value” rather than “values,” according to a pan-European study, which tracked consumer’s online behaviour.

Opportunists, the heading that most UK social media users fall under, are also the least likely to follow brands online because they like it, rather, they want brands to tell them: “What’s in it for me?” Read More »

In the spirit of Global Entrepreneurship Week, we’ve decided to take a closer look at how the world of digital has massively influenced the way entrepreneurs and start-ups function. The rise of social media in particular has radically improved the visibility of both entrepreneurs looking for funding and entrepreneurs looking to fund.

Traditionally starting a business involved a call to Companies House, to the bank or Business Link – the web now has multiple offerings and locations where budding entrepreneurs can ask questions, find funding and get some help to get started. Importantly, the web itself has become a valuable tool to help start-ups raise their profile and undertake cost-effective marketing, with that in mind here are some of our favourite examples of Digital and Entrepreneurs working together. Read More »

•    Is Janet Delvin starting to bore viewers?
•    Are people turning off Misha B?
•    Can Amelia Lily sweep in and steal the crown?

Did Gary Barlow reflect or influence the opinion of the viewing public this week when he commented that he was starting to find Janet Devlin boring?  More than likely, it would be a mixture of the two.  Either way, it didn’t carry enough weight to impact on the phone voting in Week 6, as Janet was safe for another week. Read More »

Free from Freedom foods but you still have to buy the product

A majority of consumers are uncomfortable with the amount of commercial messages they see on social networks, a large global survey has found. About 57 per cent of social network users in developed countries do not want to engage with brands via social media, according to a new study by TNS, a market research firm owned by WPP, that polled 72,000 consumers in 60 countries.

People want everything for free. They believe that they have the right to interact on a commercial platform without being bothered by how it gets paid for. They appear to be at a loss as to why these networks are not set up to be charities! Read More »

What is going on at Twitter? Earlier this month it lost its head of communications Sean Garrett and it is now being reported that its new Twitter communications director, Lynn Fox, has also left the company.

Fox leaves the company after only four months having joined from video-streaming site Ustream. Both Garrett and Fox have left around the same time as Twitter’s head of marketing Pam Kramer. Read More »

In the next two years, more than half of all retail sales, including offline and online activity, will in some way be affected by the web, as consumers increasingly use the internet to research products before purchasing.

According to new research, companies will increase their social media marketing budgets by 34% through 2014.

Read More »