Cats and the internet. Who knew they would become such a powerful force in our lives?

Some argue that the internet is made from cats. While Lolcats among so many other  sites provide a persuasive argument for that I hear it involves other stuff like dogs. Besides nobody on the internet knows you’re a dog.

Of course, video plays a big part of the internet cat story and yesterday the Walker Art Center held an Internet Cat Film Festival.  No, seriously, a festival. Read More »

The Olympics may be over for another four years but the impact that social media has had on the business world throughout the two weeks and two days of addictive television will ripple on for a very long time to come.

These superb Olympic Games will be remembered for their majesty (specifically the scene between HRH and 007, certainly a television first), for their positive communal impact on our financially weary nation, and for being the most impressive platform for proving the importance of social media in our working and everyday lives. Read More »

For a marketer it is impossible not to be an advocate of social media. It has introduced a revolution in the practice, enabling even the smallest business to hone the tools to reach a vast audience. On a larger scale it has enabled leading brands to develop a global following and build relationships with lucrative markets.

For a small company a social media campaign is relatively simple to manage, however, on the level of a multinational brand, it is a very different story. In order to make the most of the opportunities available and the scale of data involved, accurate and efficient management and interpretation is required. Read More »

Twitter is to introduce the ability for advertisers to target users with promoted tweets based on their interests or indications of what they like.

It brings a much needed degree of flexibility and additional sophistication to what advertisers are able to do on Twitter and should make it an increasingly attractive proposition to those who have so far only dipped their toe in where Promoted products are concerned.

Some of the first big users of the new feature could be the Republican and Democratic parties as they fight it out in the run up to the November election.

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Brands love hashtags. Many don’t understand them, but that doesn’t stop them. They’ll hashtag anything, even if it makes no sense whatsoever. I like to look at a hashtag as the social media equivalent of a camp fire story.

Something people can connect with, something that invites the continuation of a story or perhaps even starts a new one.

Getting it right is tough. Especially if you’re a brand. Many make the foolish mistake of thinking a hashtag has to be about the brand to deliver any value. Others think you can make it about an irrelevant strapline no one cares about. Others, like Nike, absolutely 110% get it.

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The most sophisticated of today’s enterprise marketing organisations should have the basic infrastructure in place to effectively measure the customer journey. As customer information is assembled across multiple communication channels, organisations have discovered that having the full customer journey and understanding it are two entirely different things.

Google+ has a problem. While Google’s social network might have somewhere north of 25o million active users, and some predicting it might eventually have a huge impact on search campaigns among other things, others argue it is a failure.

That Google+ equates more to a failure like Buzz than a success, like Gmail.

What though is its problem and why is it struggling? Mark Schaefer argues very well that its problem isn’t about the product itself, about features or anything like that, but about its image. Read More »

President Barack Obama continued his embrace of social media by joining social link sharing community Reddit and taking part in its Ask Me Anything (AMA) subreddit.

The President sat down for half an hour and answered some of the questions posed to him, and managed to bring down the network in the process.

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I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Verity Pillinger-Cork, Web and Digital Marketing Manager for RNIB(Royal National Institute of Blind People), to discuss how the charity is using social media to connect with those in need of information and support, and its assortment of stakeholders including carers, fundraisers, sponsors and donors.

On paper, it sounds phenomenally challenging, especially as it must be incredibly tough to decide which stakeholder group will be most receptive to communications messaging and therefore deliver the most value to the organisation. Read More »

According to Wikipedia a digital native “is a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technology and through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater understanding of its concepts”.

Why do I mislike the ‘digital native’? Well, it’s less about the individual consumers that may or may not be represented by this so called segment – the existence of which is open to debate – rather it’s what the term represents and the lack of critical analysis behind its use.

To begin with, I take umbrage with what the ‘digital native’ tag signifies – it reinforces the flawed notion that young people are somehow more capable, creative and the sole users of the latest technology, whilst the older generation still fumbles around with their TV remotes.

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