The Financial Times, having spent the vast majority of the last 124 years as a printed business newspaper, will soon mainly be consumed on smartphones and tablets, according to digital leader Rob Grimshaw.

The managing director of FT.com called the shift to mobile “bigger in magnitude than the switch from print to desktop”, and added that the pace of change in consumption habits is happening faster. Read More »

He’s staring at a virgin piece of paper laid out on the desk. His pen hovers over the blank sheet. Stumped, he leans back in his chair with a sigh. Smooths his hair and draws deeply on a cigarette.  David Ogilvy, one of the best-known of the Madison Avenue ad men, said he was a “lousy copywriter”. “If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone,” he told one correspondent who asked for the recipe for good writing. “This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy. The next morning I get up early and edit the gush. ”

The printing press and movable type, the typewriter, the word processor and the internet have made it easier over the centuries to share the written word. They haven’t made it easier to write well. Having the means of publication is not the same as having an audience. The internet bulges with blogs with an audience of one: the writer. Poets and novelists hope to find an audience but can work to please themselves. But journalists and copywriters are paid to enlighten, engage or entertain and have failed if their work is unread. Likewise, bloggers. Read More »

In the early hours of this morning President Barack Obama declared he had won a second term. On Twitter. “Four more years”, he Tweeted. As Editor Gordon Macmillan pointed out, this has become the most shared Tweet in history, and marks a watershed moment for the platform.

There was no reply of concession from Republican challenger Governor Mitt Romney, whose final tweet of the campaign came five hours earlier:

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People’s trust in traditional media is declining, with recommendations from friends, social media and blogs becoming key influencers of a  purchasing decision.  This, along with the SEO benefits, has meant brands are increasingly seeing social media as a vital channel.

The key to social media for brands is their ability to engage with the audience and this is increasingly being done through visually compelling content, which video helps deliver. Video for social media, known as social video, has become the choice for many brands on social networks. Read More »

In the end the first words we had from a victorious President Barack Obama fittingly came in a Tweet. It was simple and to the point. The brevity hinting at the exhausting long hard campaigning road that Obama and his team have taken to secure a second term in the White House.

Obama simply Tweeted “Four more years” accompanied by a picture of him embracing his wife Michelle. Poignant and effective and already the most shared Tweet in history. It has been shared so far more than 660,000 times and been favourited another 225,000 times. Its total will be huge and will mark a watershed moment in social media.

In an election so often dubbed the Twitter election it was a great Tweet to end a campaign with. We had already had the most Tweeted political moment earlier in the campaign, but as Fox and CNN called the victory early this morning Twitter went into overdrive and US election-related Tweets hit an average of 327,452 a minute. Those Tweets capped a campaign in which Obama had led not only in the polls in a tight race but had led by a considerable margin in the digital and social media battle throughout. It was a lot about Twitter, but it was also about a whole lot more. Read More »