Fake Twitter followers is a topic that will just not go away. There was the recent report about Louise Mensch gaining 40,000 ‘fake Twitter followers’ overnight and former Conservative parliamentary candidate Mark Clarke before that.

Now The New York Times is reporting that as many as 70% of Barack Obama’s 18.8 million followers could be fake.

It quotes a report by social media management firm StatusPeople, which claims it can work out how many fake followers you have. Read More »

We’ve read so much about how the US 2012 Presidential election is going to be the Twitter election, as both sides ramp up their  use of social media although still  fail to engage as I wrote recently, and it has been interesting to watch it emerge and work its way deeper into the heart of mainstream media.

We got a taste of the kind of thing we might see with Twitter’s recent Olypmics deal with NBC. That proved a real learning curve for Twitter, which got into a bit of a muddle when it blocked one journalist’s account before quickly restoring it again

Now we are seeing Al Gore’s Current TV turnover half of its screen to Twitter for the US elections in an effort to help it compete and differentiate itself from its much bigger and better funded rivals such as ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox News and CNN et cetera. Read More »

This summer has certainly raised the bar on producing events. The successes of the Jubilee and London 2012 have left everyone buzzing – and turning to social media in record breaking numbers. More than 80,000 people tweeted during Usain Bolt’s second gold medal win alone.

But as it is unlikely most of us will be putting on events of such world renown, is there anything we take away from the Jubilee and the Games that we can apply to the world of business?

The answer is yes. Even without access to Danny Boyle, the Queen (in or outside an aeroplane), James Bond or glittering audience pixels, there is a lot we can learn from this summer’s hottest tickets on how to make events – any events – more ‘tweetable’; here are some top tips to consider. Read More »

Most campaigns we work on these days contain some element of influencer marketing such as inviting bloggers to a launch party, sending them product or giving them access to exclusive content.

Everyone needs their brand advocates and blogger outreach is a great way of engaging your potentially most valuable fans.

There are some huge pitfalls though, and having been both sides of the blogger/marketer relationship here are my ten tips for getting the most out of advocacy programs.

Read More »

Are we headed for the Gamepocalypse – a dystopia where everyone earns meaningless points for every activity from watching television to shopping to riding the bus? Doubtful, as earning meaningless points isn’t much fun on its own. Why then are marketers’ attempts at gamification so focused on meaningless points?

Gamification sounds easy enough: translate business objectives into desired customer behaviour, use a points system to link behaviours to virtual rewards and free swag, throw in some social media integration and voila, profit.

As games are fun and motivating, making our customer interactions more game-like will make our customers happier and more motivated. Read More »

That last thing you need is yet another blog post telling you how important video is for marketing. So, this isn’t one. If you still haven’t grasped the importance of online video, then stop reading this for a second, open up a new tab, and search for “video for marketing”. You should stumble across enough compelling stats pretty quickly to make things a little clearer.

But enough about what this blog post isn’t, and on to what it is. Below you’ll find five tips to ensure the video content you’re spending the time, effort and budget to craft gets in front of the right audience. This blog post focuses on techniques that you don’t (necessarily) have to spend money on, just time. There are plenty of seeding agencies out there who can do a great job for you (if you have the budget) but below are some tactics that you can use for free. Read More »