While social media is booming one area that is not is social commerce. It is struggling to take off and this study and infographic from media agency MPG Media Contacts and Lightspeed Research points to the lack of social media included on ecommerce sites.

Why that is the case is pretty simple. Consumers use social media as both recommendations and inspiration when shopping online, but are reluctant to use links from social sites to buy.

What they want the study says is for brands to make their own sites more social and invest more in developing ways for their consumers to share photos, videos and product reviews. Read More »

A good addition here to the tips for journalists using social media file from the Wall Street Journal.

Social media and journalism have developed a symbiotic relationship evidenced as we reported recently by a study showing many UK journalists say they “can’t work without social media. It is only some on the fringes who continue to argue that social media destroying good journalism. That is simply not true.

You only have to look to how journalists have used it to cover the Arab spring and Syria — that conflict in-particular has been noted as a ‘War Reported by social media and citizen-journalists’.

The tips here while aimed at those working in the media are more widely applicable to many others working in social media. It’s about good practice and that is universal.

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Forrester recently released a forecast that people in the search industry may find a little disquieting. These gods of digital marketing research are predicting that year-on-year growth in paid search is set to slow to 19% in the current year. This is compared to 31% for last year and 24% between 2009 and 2010.

Unsettled by the findings, I decided to audit our own growth in paid search spend.

And the results neatly mirror Forrester’s: spend growth amongst Tug’s PPC clients, held from 2010 to 2012, slowed from 46% in 2010/11 down to 17% in 2011/12. So could this mark a nail in the coffin for paid search? Of course not.  Read More »

As David Cameron gives his speech today at the Conservative Party Conference it comes during his first week on Twitter.

The PM has been off to a flying start quickly hitting 100,000 followers and showing us he can use a hashtag or two and attach plenty of images.

He has also tweeted a preview of his speech telling us he will be “levelling with the British people in my speech at 11.30. It’s sink or swim, do or decline”. The bookies are laying odds of evens that Cameron will today mention Twitter (he didn’t) having previously been less flattering about it. Read More »