This post is provided by our partner Headstream, the social brand agency behind the Social Brands 100.

Chiltern Railways has been shortlisted in the Social Brands 100.  Find out the results on Tuesday, 29 May on The Wall. Follow the conversation #sb100.

With 1.34 billion rail journeys taken in the year before March 2011, it’s fair to state that rail companies play a particularly prominent role in the lives of UK citizens. Read More »

The topic of PR and SEO is one which continues to fascinate me. Why is it that so many PR agencies have been slow to exploit this field, estimated to be worth £500m per year?

For this reason I ran a rough Survey Monkey study of UK PRs during May 2012 and, although it garnered 100 entries, the responses were interesting, especially as a quarter (23 people) took the time to fill the optional comments box. Read More »

ExactTarget have put together this infographic for Saturday’s Champions League final, which saw more than a million tweets sent as Chelsea went on to beat Bayern Munich on penalties.

On Twitter, and on the field, the man of the Match was Chelsea hero Didier Drogba. Read More »

As YouTube celebrates it’s seventh birthday, The Verge have reported that a staggering seventy-two hours of video are uploaded to the the site every minute, a whole day’s worth of content more than a year ago. Owned by Google, YouTube has become embedded into the search process with videos hosted by it gaining prominence in the Google search algorithm, and therefore search results. Consequently, it has eliminated competition from the like of Vimeo, who offer an equally good, if not better, service, but do not have the groundswell in take up. Read More »

How complicated exactly is social media marketing? If you look beyond Facebook, Twitter and Google+ the sea of social media sites, tools and platforms makes for a dizzying sight as this infographic highlights.

Not only that but it has become seriously more busy in the the last year alone. You get a really good idea of that from this “Social media map of the world” we published back in 2010. Read More »

In the quest for content that users of brand social assets will appreciate and interact with, imagery continues to surface as a key driver of engagement.  All you need to do to understand this is consider your own social media behavior.  While you may check your social streams multiple times a day, the odds are good that you fly through these “social checks” at quite a high rate of speed.

It’s also likely you’re prioritising your focus first on who posted the content.  There are certain names you are more attuned to because historically, those names have brought you content you use or care about.  Second to that, it’s the image attached to a post that either makes you slow down or stop at least long enough to read the headline.  Other social users are no different from you, which is why imagery is without a doubt King Content’s queen. Read More »

Today Facebook debuts on the Nasdaq stock market in the US at $38 a share and will be valued at $104bn, netting Mark Zuckerburg $19bn. Yesterday we heard that Pinterest could be valued at $1.5bn. Recently, iPhone app Instagram was bought by Facebook for $1bn.

Social media has become embedded into our everyday lives, into business, the media and Government. It’s why the companies behind the technology are deemed such prized commodities at the moment. While the disruption that social media services have caused is indisputable, whether these services are so deeply meshed into our existence that they really are long term financially viable propositions is less clear. Is the age of sharing going to finish as quickly as it started?

To coin a phrase, if looks like a bubble, and acts like a bubble, it probably is a bubble.
Read More »

It’s the question on everyone’s lips today – would you invest in Facebook? As the company finalises its IPO price ahead of its market debut on Friday, the general consensus is a positive one – early reports show a huge amount of interest in owning a tiny piece of Facebook’s 900-million-user success story. Predictions suggest that the share price could push valuation up to $104bn – according to the Telegraph, this makes it more ‘valuable’ than both Disney and Ford.

So, for Facebook’s early investors, payday has arrived. But surely the fact that so many of them are cashing in should be a warning to wannabe buyers? If you invested in 2004, you’re laughing – the social network’s value has exploded to such an extent that even someone like U2’s Bono, who owns fewer than 2% of the shares, is set to be a billionaire and the world’s richest rock star by the weekend. Read More »

Arsenal topped the Twitter Social Media league with nearly 1.5 million Twitter followers (also the 3rd highest worldwide for a football club) in May. However, having the most followers doesn’t necessarily equate to being the best. Manchester City were this month’s champions both on the pitch and in the social media world.

City collected their second “Best of the Month” award this season in Freestyle Interactive‘s  monthly Premier League Social Media Stats infographic series. Read More »

This is worth a read. The Cabinet Office has published guidance for civil servants on the use of social media as well as tips for government Departments on how to overcome the technical barriers to civil servants accessing the internet and social media channels.

It’s always good to hear some sensible words on social from someone very senior. In this instance they come from Sir Bob Kerslake (@sirbobkerslake), Head of the Civil Service, who talks about the change social media is bringing to the way the civil service, and the rest of us, will work in the future. Read More »