I was speaking to my good friend @RobinRobson yesterday and as usual we got onto the subjects of Twitter, small businesses, corporates, banks, retailers, UK economy and supermarkets ripping us off… it was a long call….Within that call, I made the statement to Robin that I have always and continue to believe that Twitter is a game changer for small businesses.

So why do I say That? Traditional marketing ie radio, TV, billboards, newspaper etc… is all about who has the biggest and deepest pockets. Whoever can pay for more air time, more seconds at the Superbowl, more TV advert time will usually win the game. So in the traditional marketing sense its all about how much of a marketing budget you have. Read More »

Kraft’s European vice president of marketing, Daryl Fielding, was recently quoted as saying “don’t forget customer needs in the rush to digital”, and for me this serves to highlight some of the problems that marketers face as they look at new technologies to help them deliver their messages to more and more people as effectively as possible.

It’s often far too easy to get caught up in the bright lights of digital, but marketers have to look closely at what they are doing and the “new media” channels that they are using, and ask themselves whether they are really delivering in the way that traditional media are? Yes, digital is by its very nature extremely measurable and has changed the way we look at many other media channels, but sometimes the numbers can be distracting. Read More »

Alex Bowen, CEO of Oscar De la Renta, once said: “We could not have been more wrong in our expectation of the internet.” This was his jaw-dropped response to selling an $80,000 dress online.

But with Burberry having just announced some impressive trend-bucking sales (29% revenue increase in the first half of its financial year), and crediting them to digital campaigns, the luxury sector is waking up to the power of digital. Burberry is now dedicating 60% of its marketing spend on digital channels – roughly three times as much as the average digital spend. Read More »

· Little Mix still set to win (according to social media)

· Most popular during Saturday¹s show was Amelia Lily

· Average growth of fans during Week 9 performances 16,330

The semi-final of The X Factor went exactly as social media indicated it would; Misha B leaving the show and Marcus, Amelia Lily and girl band Little Mix forging ahead to Wembley this coming weekend. Read More »

There’ve been several round-ups of the year in Twitter, but here’s another piece of research looking at how much Twitter drove the mainstream news agenda in 2011.

We’re familiar now with the habit of mainstream news reporting on ‘Twitter storms’ – either a story making the news because a lot of people are tweeting about it, or sometimes even making the fact that people are tweeting about it the story itself. Now the concept of the ‘Twitter storm’ has been taken to its logical conclusion by being given its own Beaufort scale. Sort of.

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It’s ironic that Bell Pottinger – the guardian of many reputations – is currently dealing with its own reputation issue.

Reports suggesting Bell Pottinger could manipulate Google results to drown out negative coverage of Uzbek human rights violations and child labour have damaged the reputation of reputation management. Although the PR industry has a power to influence, this influence is limited. If the truth is dark and nasty, the truth will out eventually. Read More »

Twitter last night took the wraps off a new version of Twitter with a simplified design to make it easier to follow, connect with others, and discover something new.

It is a completely different look after five years of very little movement on Twitter.com. The changes take Twitter closer to Facebook and Google+.

Twitter is also introducing enhanced profile pages for brands, which it is launching with 21 advertising partners including @AmericanExpress, @BestBuy, @bing, @chevrolet, @CocaCola and @Dell. These are a major addition as Twitter pushes to attract more advertisers. 2012 is going to be a big year for Twitter. Read More »

ClickZ has bagged a copy of an email from the Twitter sales team to prospective advertisers, which sheds light on how much the social network is pricing followers at.

The memo says cost-per-follower (CPF) rates for Promoted Accounts run at between $2.50 and $4 while cost-per-engagement (CPE) for Promoted Tweets rates are priced at from $0.75 to $2.50 (“engagement” refers to clicks, favourites, retweets and replies). Read More »

A report out today ranks the social media performance of the world’s most valuable brands. It puts Google as overall clear leader with Disney, Apple, Starbucks, Blackberry and Coca-Cola as runners-up.

The report also names and shames the bottom five social performers from the top 50 most valuable brands: Marlboro, Berkshire Hathaway, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and China Mobile all score poorly.  Others trailing behing include Gillette, IBM and Visa. Read More »