Launched this morning is the Social Brands 100 table that has ranked the top 100 social media brands and published some key insights all of which you will find below.

No surprise to see Dell at the top it has shown leadership here as has the second and third placed brands Nike (Nike Plus to be specific) and Starbucks. In Fourth is UK mobile brand Giffgaff, which I will be honest and say I have never heard of, and in fifth is BestBuy UK Read More »

What a great infographic that delves into the key issues that brands face on social media. Is it all about followers? Are those 19 million fans you have collected worth their social media weight? And should every brand be social?

This is one to take a good read of. It inlcudes a bunch of great social media case studies looking at brands such as Starbucks, Dunkin Doughnuts, Axe, Clinque, Budweiser and Wendy’s. Enjoy. Read More »

Yesterday, Facebook launched its long awaited “Deals” offering in Europe, but what is it and what does it mean for brands?

Deals, which was launched at the end of last year in the US, allows subscribers of the popular social network to use their smart phones to see what shops have “deals” nearby. Read More »

Facebook could be facing a new privacy row as it prepares to launch a new ad option that will turn your Facebook’s “likes” into ads or “sponsored stories” as it is calling them without giving users any opt out.

Some people are clearly not going to like this at all. Effectively, the new ad unit turns Likes, Facebook Places checkins, and application activity by users into ads. It allows advertisers to effectively take from the crowd and build ads on the back of any viral buzz it might be generating. Read More »

Would the lure of a free song on iTunes, an excerpt from a new novel or access to a site usually behind a paywall get you to choose one particular coffee shop over its rivals?

Starbucks Digital Network: how the homepage will look

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As we reported last week, advertising on Facebook has increased 10-fold in the last year, with brands like Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Nike putting out focused social media ad campaigns which create real customer engagement and significant return on investment.

Even if you haven’t got the marketing budget of a global brand, with nearly half of all small businesses finding customers through social networks it’s important to realise that you can still run an effective Facebook advertising campaign without spending that much money. And if you haven’t picked up on this, your competitors certainly have! Worldwide ad spending on the network for 2010 looks set to hit $1.28 billion.

So why are businesses flocking to advertise through Facebook?

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A Bloomberg report says that marketers  are flocking to Facebook with its biggest advertisers boosting their spending by at least 10-fold in the past year with some increasing spend by as much as 20-fold or more. Read More »

A report out today says that 90% of people who use Twitter are real people, only 10% are brands, and that more than 80% of tweets barely mention brands. Read More »

Two case studies I predict you’ll be reading about a lot over the next couple of years: how Old Spice got social marketing right and how Twitter got introducing commerce right. Read More »

With the speed at which the Facebook Like Button is spreading around the web the 34 brands who can already boast in excess of one million fans will shortly be joined by a number of others, but catching Starbucks with its 7.2 million fans will take some doing. Read More »