Twitter has parted company with PR firm Edelman after only appointing the agency in September. The agency was appointed with a brief to help boost Twitter’s profile with consumers, which was seen as a sign that the social network wanted to take more control of its communications message.

The end of the relationship with Edelman comes after a tumultuous few weeks in Twitter’s communications and marketing teams. Twitter in quick  succession parted company with its head of communications, Sean Garrett, as well as its communications director, Lynn Fox, and its head of marketing Pam Kramer. Read More »

A few years ago, you’d have to actually watch a football match (or listen on the radio) to get live updates from the pitch. Today, you can follow live coverage on Twitter, get your half-time analysis from a football community like footbo and bantr , discuss the result on Facebook and get the low down after the game… from the players themselves on Twitter. We did some digging into the relationship between our national obsession with football, and social media.

Footballers and their fans

Players like Cristiano Ronaldo have millions of fans following them on Twitter. This is a great way for players and fans to talk directly to each other, but it also carries a risk. The carefully crafted soundbites of a press conference can be replaced with ill-thought-out comments that often as not make it into the press. Read More »

Random start:

We’ve spent a lot of this year talking about Pandas.

What will we be talking about this time next year? I’d like to think it will be Racoons or tricycles or sink plungers

If you have any thoughts send them by postcard please to stefan@propellernet.co.uk

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I used to have a boss with an amazing knack for sidling up to the desk of a junior researcher late on a Friday afternoon to ask, “How are you fixed?”.

This meant one thing: a flash poll or fast-turnaround survey put into the field that day and reported back to the client as soon as it was done. A flash poll in those days, for me, was the first sign that a client was in trouble. Some crisis had hit and we needed to dive in to understand how much people knew, how much they were affected by that knowledge and how to fix any damage to the brand or bottom line. We joked that we needed a big red button to push to set off a siren so that everyone would know that it was going to be a long night or two. Read More »

It’s been a year of highs and lows for football clubs on Social Media, we’ve seen everything from player’s Twitter accounts being hacked, managers banning Social Media and Tweets getting players into serious trouble. Yet, we’ve also seen Manchester United break the 20 million Facebook fans mark, Manchester City continue to come up with creative fan engagement strategies and even the advent of the “Social Media Stadium“. Read More »

Are you partial to a bit of peer pressure? Social media experts around the globe think so. Companies like Facebook are staking their future on the idea that a recommendation from a friend is far more trustworthy than one from a flashy marketing message. Social media is now playing a huge role in peoples buying decisions, even affecting choices people make in their day to day lives.  This got me thinking, what would Twitter have me do this Christmas if social consensus guided my decisions?

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It’s only five days until Christmas is upon us, all of us, even social media community managers. At Rabbit we believe that online communities are those that are regularly maintained and considerate of their audiences at all times, even Christmas Day.

The Rabbits are lucky enough to work with a number of clients in the travel sector, which of course meant when the snow fell last year, so did the tweets and Facebook posts and forum posts and blogs and well, you get the picture. We had a busy Christmas and we learnt a lot, quickly, and now this year as we prepare our teams we thought would share with you some of our top tips for our community managers this festive season. Read More »

•    Social media predicted the winner
•    There’s no ‘hindsight bias’ here
•    Tulisa gains most Twitter followers for the first time in the series

With the eighth series of The X Factor now drawing to a close, we are able to reflect on what we have seen and learnt over the last 10 weeks.  For those that have been following along with our weekly blog posts since the live shows began, our focus has naturally been on social media – and the role this has played both for the contestants, but also for the programme makers.

We have crunched the numbers and analysed the data each week, and we’ve done it manually – investing many, many hours in the process.  We’ve not had access to the qualitative insights a robust social media measurement tool can provide, nor the data and analytics that the X Factor in-house teams do. There are a plethora of tools out there we could have looked at, but for consistency, we elected to remain with readily available figures that aren’t open to interpretation.  The numbers are what they are.  Regardless, the limited data that we have captured has been able to provide an incredible amount of insight, which we hope those of you that have followed along over the weeks have seen. Read More »

Surprise news from the New York Times as chief executive officer Janet Robinson is to step down at the end of the month. The news took those inside the and outside the media group by surprise coming as it does at a crucial point in the history of the New York Times newspaper. Earlier this year the paper launched its paywall, which has performed much better than hoped.

The expectation is that whoever takes over from Robinson will be a new kind of CEO and one with a focus squarely on digital. What is clear for now, however is that there is no immediate successor in place. Read More »

For many businesses Secret Santa provides a fun and easy way to make sure everyone in the office shares in the Christmas spirit. For the luckiest participants it means a hilarious opportunity to buy a wholly inappropriate present for a colleague. For an unlucky few, it means spending hours on one of those precious remaining weekends before Christmas stressing about what to buy for the new Accounts Manager who no-one really knows.

But how many of you out there still have last year’s mug, or plant? How many of you still play mini executive air-hockey? I’m betting not many. That’s why this year one agency decided to do something a bit different. Read More »