As Facebook announces advertising for mobile and brand pages change to the new Timelines format, how can marketers make the most of these changes?

At the end of February, Facebook announced big plans for its mobile platform. It’s unsurprising that Facebook is keen to make the most of its mobile platform, as more than 450 million people use Facebook Mobile on a monthly basis. More importantly, mobile is outgrowing desktop use on the social network by two-to-one. As such, Facebook has planned a variety of mobile-centric product announcements this year. Not least, was the news that the Timeline-friendly format already available for users’ profiles would now be available for mobile brand pages, and companies will now be able to advertise in mobile news feeds through Sponsored Stories. These game-changing trends mean that marketers have a great opportunity to reach users on their smart phones in 2012. Read More »

Is just listening enough or should brands be using their findings to communicate to those they are listening to?

Brands and business are facing a variety of challenges in entering the world of social media – an industry designed for the consumer. So how can the consumer be sympathetic toward their difficulties, when all they see are companies such as Coca Cola asking them to ‘Like’ or ‘Retweet’ their latest viral of a man banging a drum produced by Calvin Harris? What’s the relevance of this and why do consumers need to interact on their level?

It’s simple to ascertain that brands are trying to create awareness within sub cultures so they can appeal to the masses. This is what they know and how they are used to engaging the mass consumer audiences. Read More »

This post is provided by our partner Headstream, the social brand agency behind the Social Brands 100.

Mobile network Giffgaff, it could be argued, was born social.  It’s a fully independent network run in part by its community. Members are rewarded for contributing to customer service, product development and growing the community, receiving rewards in the form of airtime, cash or a charitable donation. Giffgaff was one of the top 5 brands in last year’s Social Brands 100, and number 1 amongst telecoms brands. We spoke to CRM Manager Claire Kavanagh about how social has moved on since then.

Q: What are the most significant changes you’ve seen in social over the last year?  Can you tell us a little about what you’re doing differently or have you found an approach that is working for you? Read More »

It’s not a major surprise that UK consumers are spending huge proportions of their spare time online. According to Experian Hitwise data UK Internet users made 2.2 billion visits to search engines in February 2012 and this figure continues to grow.

What’s interesting to us as marketers, however, is the back story. When we delve deeper we can see that consumer behaviour is changing in reaction to the booming quantity of content available to them. Read More »