Many organisations are using social media to get closer to their customers, see what they say about their products and/or services ‘in the moment’ and give their business an opportunity to respond to their customers’ concerns or complaints in real time. But there is a growing divide between companies that use social media and those that don’t. Ryanair has chosen not to engage with social media despite operating in an industry that generally does.

Fully a third of FTSE companies, predominantly financial institutions and pharmaceutical companies, have no Twitter presence.  This seems surprising: even companies which don’t sell directly to consumers still have their corporate reputation to look after. A small piece of research we recently conducted at Ipsos MORI (albeit not in enough depth to draw robust conclusions) seemed to suggest that there is a link between the extent that consumer brands are talked about online in conjunction with their corporate parent, and the relative strengths of both the corporate and consumer brands themselves. Meanwhile, fully 82% of the Ipsos MORI Reputation Council (carefully selected senior corporate communications professionals across Europe) agree that discussions in social media channels can directly impact a company’s overall reputation and license to operate.  So why the disconnect? Or is the FTSE 100 not representative? Or – frankly – do some communications professionals need to put their money where their mouth is where it comes to social media?

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These infographics here take a good look at question and answer social site Quora, which is it seems really starting to fly in terms of traffic. Forgotten by some but really worth taking a look at if you have not looked in a while. There are so many ways to use Quora whether it is quick questions, voting or organising similar topics for later reference. It is increasingly a great social reference tool.

We have two Quora inforgraphics here. The first from Tamba looking at its growth in terms of revenue and traffic as well as popularity by country. Read More »

Last night was the 14th annual Pride Of Britain awards, an annual event honouring Britons who have acted bravely or extraordinarily in challenging situations. Using Sysomos, as well as our own ECHOscreen social intelligence tools, we had a look at the 200,638 tweets around the show both as it was recorded on Monday night, and televised by ITV on Tuesday.

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Most of us woke up this morning to hear the news that George Lucas had sold his film company, LucasFilm, to entertainment giant Disney for $4.1bn (£2.5bn), and a new ‘Star Wars’ film is planned for 2015.

Not just one new movie, but three. To complete the original Lucas vision for a nine movie arc.

Star Wars fans didn’t waste much time as they took to the web to creatively share what they thought about the deal. Read More »

It is essential to carry out a social media audit, be it at the start of a campaign, or for a new pitch prospect, or even a regular quarterly “MOT” of your own social media programmes. This should stand aside from the regular monthly key performance indicator (KPI) reports that campaign managers should run and it helps if someone neutral and unconnected with the programme conducts it to avoid any misrepresentation of the data and to add new ideas.

The role of social media audits is particularly relevant given that many brand presences were set up in haste to respond to client demand without clarity of an objective or proper planning. But what should a social media audit actually look like? Read More »

With the Presidential Election in its final week and given the huge conversation that has been taking place throughout social during the campaign, the problem of brands achieving real value from Facebook has been whirring in my mind.

As we know from our own experiences with our own clients, there’s a big issue with measurement. Many Facebook metrics are meaningless unless applied, with a full understanding of the context, to a tangible business goal. Without that, they lead to time-wasting ‘Like’-chasing and a failure to interrogate what engagement really means. Read More »

A hedge fund analyst in New York City, Shashank Tripathi, apologised last night for posting fake Hurricane Sandy news updates on Twitter. Tripathi who uses the Twitter handle @ComfortablySmug sent out a series of fake tweets claiming more dire news about the storm hitting New York City.

One tweet about a floor of the New York Stock Exchange being flooded was widely retweeted. He also falsely claimed that an energy company, Con Ed, was cutting services to all of Manhattan.

The fake Tweets were not an isolated incident. Fake pictures were also rife. The image here? That’s not from Hurricane Sandy. This scary looking shot of waves battering the Statue of Liberty turned out to be production art from the disaster movie ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. Read More »

When will brands ever learn? Do people not use the internet and read stuff? When it comes to social media we are now at a point when we have a fat pile of case files detailing how various brands have failed at social media, but this does not apparently stop other brands copying these mistakes over and over again.

This time around it is the turn of American Apparel. It has had the bright idea of rolling out a “Hurricane Sandy Sale” ad and as you might guess has sparked something of a Twitter backlash and ensured its brand will forever be linked with the words “social media fail”.

Earlier this year it was KFC Thailand doing its best to fail on social media. While the country was watching tsunami warnings and fearing the worst the fast food firm posted a message on its official Faceook page suggesting it was some time for tasty chicken as they watched the drama unfold. Read More »

We all know the  increasingly outdated and cliched image of hackers – a young, socially awkward man, in a basement causing chaos (this despite the best efforts of Angelina Jolie). There is now a more socially aware type of hacker coming to the fore, using social media and opensource tools to build digital projects to help their community.

Hurricane Sandy, which has already swept across the Caribbean and is now hitting the East Coast of America, has illustrated this perfectly.

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Its clear that the internet’s function as a ‘two-way communication channel’ has revolutionized the traditional relationship between an organisation and its public.  However with the word ‘social’ now dominating internet lingo, the term ‘two-way communication channel’ becomes a dated understatement.

As coined by a recent Ipsos MORI report: “The Internet is not a two-way communication channel, but a communal one”,

The report is one of many that recognizes the huge potential of an increasingly social internet, where people connect themselves to an organisation without a second thought.  Read More »