America’s fastest growing companies are more likely to have corporate blogs than those listed on the Fortune 500.
Just 144 Fortune 500 companies have a public-facing corporate blog, with 35% of these coming from the top 100. Read More
UPDATE - Facebook is suffering something of a backlash in the wake of its $1bn acquisition of photo app Instagram yesterday afternoon in the US, which makes the company more valuable than the New York Times.
Instagram users have been been voicing their anger on Twitter with many saying they do not want Facebook to have access to more of their data or to flood the service with ads.
Instagram users have been posting details of how to delete accounts and numerous articles have appeared on tech blogs giving instructions regarding how users go about this closing their Instagram account.
This past 24 hours have seen the latest Twitter storm come hurtling through the social media atmosphere, sweeping up thousands before it in a big stinky cloud of outrage and bile. Not for the first time, the catalyst for the disgust was the Daily Mail, this time an article by Samantha Brick about “the downsides to looking pretty”. Whether or not they are cynically doing this stuff on purpose (1.5 million hits on one article is pretty impressive) is open for debate, but yet again they prove the sheer monumental snowball that can be created on social media if you do enough to sufficiently create the avalanche. Read More
Over the weekend, news broke around government plans for increased surveillance of digital data. The idea is that, without a warrant, security agency GCHQ will be able to see the packet data of emails, phone calls, text messages and social media messages so that they can see who is communicating with who, when, and how often. Such an idea was implemented by the previous government, but scrapped back in 2009 after sustained pressure from the two parties that now make-up the Coalition.
The proposals have, unsurprisingly, received a huge backlash across the social media platforms that they seek to regulate. Furthermore, internet companies have privately expressed concerns about these plans, including the fear that repressive regimes could demand access to the data. Read More
This post is provided by our partner Headstream, the social brand agency behind the Social Brands 100.
Mobile network Giffgaff, it could be argued, was born social. It’s a fully independent network run in part by its community. Members are rewarded for contributing to customer service, product development and growing the community, receiving rewards in the form of airtime, cash or a charitable donation. Giffgaff was one of the top 5 brands in last year’s Social Brands 100, and number 1 amongst telecoms brands. We spoke to CRM Manager Claire Kavanagh about how social has moved on since then.
Q: What are the most significant changes you’ve seen in social over the last year? Can you tell us a little about what you’re doing differently or have you found an approach that is working for you? Read More
I was asked to write this social media guide for journalists for The Journalism Foundation as part of a free online toolkit for anyone who wants to start up their own local news network.
Social media skills for journalists in 2012 are as essential as a notebook and phone. They are basic must-haves that should be part of your journalistic DNA. If you are not using social media you need to have a very good reason, as you can guarantee that your colleagues and your rivals will be. So get going. Read More
Financial organisations have traditionally shied away from using social media to connect with customers. In such a regulated market, who could blames them? And who’d want to ‘engage’ with their bank anyway?
As ever, things aren’t quite that simple. The under 24s prefer to sort their customer service issues out over social media, and research has shown that people want to interact with brands – including their banks, it would seem – on social networks. As a result, a number of banks and financial organisations have started to develop their social media presences to service this increasing demand for social interaction – and they can do this well within regulations. As we’ve seen with that resignation letter from Goldman Sachs, having no or little social media presence yourself doesn’t stop your customers, employees and potential recruits using Facebook and Twitter to talk about you. Read More
In the past month EPL football clubs have amassed 3.3 million new Facebook Likes, 342,109 new Twitter followers and nearly 10,000 tweets. This works out as a 12% growth for Twitter followers and 9% for Facebook fans and it doesn’t like it will decline any time soon. With this in mind, who performed best in the last month?
The below infographic comes from Digital Agency Freestyle Interactive, who have been producing monthly EPL Social Media reports since November.
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It seems so natural to many people now, that it’s a hazy memory of a time when it wasn’t possible to catch up on the latest news stories or updates from celebrities on your mobile, in the same amount of time it takes to step off the tube, jump on the escalator and order a latte in the coffee shop next door. In the modern world people want information quickly and in an easily digestible format, and this helps to explain the growth in popularity of Twitter since its inception six years ago. Read More
I’m going to try and not let this post fall into the trap of Pinterest-bashing as seems to be increasingly easy to do so these days. The inevitable backlash from Pinterest being the cool new kid on the block is in full swing, and for all the fawning, doe-eyed ‘Pinthusiasts’ clamoring to praise the site, and all the marketers running round like headless chickens trying to discover how best to use it for selling stuff, there’s the growing band of dissenters taking the contrary opinion. Read More
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