In our internet-fuelled world of deafening noise, I’ve long preached about curation to help us with our web-induced A.D.D. I don’t want to check out 250+ blogs, I want someone to save me time and trawl through all that chaff and siphon out the nuggets of news and information that are right for me. Twitter […]
The biggest news in tech this week is that Yahoo! finally appointed a replacement for their known-to-swear-a-lot and former top-dog, Carol Bartz. They’ve appointed little-known Scott Thompson from PayPal. But the much more fun/entertaining/frightening tech news is Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter. Really joined. No spoof account (that was his wife’s). No digital sidekick thumbing his […]
I attended Doug Richard’s School for Startups recently. The title is a bit of a misnomer as the day had nothing specifically to do with starting a business, but it did have plenty of action points for marketing. The day was fast-paced with lecture-style talks from Mr Richard and three colleagues. Let’s be honest, you […]
Twitter is front page news this week but a friend emailed me asking my thoughts on something other than super injunctions. He wrote, “If twitter’s all about engaging with people, conversations not campaigns etc, why is @delloutlet doing so well? Both in followers, and in direct revenue according to them. It goes against everything I’ve […]
Do you like business books that inspire you to move into action, or books that break down what someone did in their business? If it’s the former then this month has seen a couple of excellent releases for you: Gary Vaynerchuk is a hustler. His second book, The Thank You Economy is out this week. […]
The Internet has only really been around for the masses since Microsoft brought us Windows 95 and the ever-present Internet Explorer. But over 15 years on, digital and digital marketing still remains a bolt on for many businesses that should really know better. I’m always amazed when strong marketers tell me their marketing director (not […]
Linked In added the Signal this week. It’s a new product that, “gives you a whole new way to consume information and news that’s most relevant to you as a professional.” Hmm… The trouble is, I fervently disagree with those who hook up their Twitter feed to Linked In. It’s failing to understand that different […]
A website isn’t a necessity for every single business in existence but few would argue it’s a massive opportunity. When business people ask my opinion about website designers or what type of site they should employ, I say 90% should use a blog. This will usually cause a lifted eyebrow or two as the word […]
Robert Tyler started the blog ‘I hate Ryanair’ back in February 2007. It really does what it says on the tin by publicising any and all grievances with Ryanair, ‘the World’s most hated airline’ according to Tyler and plenty of his readers. The comment section of his blog extends the frustration and anger further still […]
GAP changed their logo recently. And promptly changed it back. Writing about the flip, GAP president, Marka Hansen said in the Huffington Post, “given the passionate outpouring from customers that followed, we’ve decided to engage in the dialogue, take their feedback on board and work together as we move ahead and evolve to the next […]
I met someone this week that thinks they were burgled because they tweeted that they were away from home (i.e. London, when their location says Brighton). Such scare stories are only more likely as location-based services begin to make traction. Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Loopt, Yelp etc are still in their relevant infancies but with Facebook […]
Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, is now a year old and it’s been a good one. They’ve clawed 12.7% of the enormous search market, which is no small feat. And they’ve got what political campaigners crave: momentum. Bing will be powering Yahoo search from this autumn and Yahoo’s got 18.9% of the market. Granted, it’s early […]
Managing Director of Emerging Media for Proof Integrated Communications, B.L. Ochman recently wrote about ‘the top 10 companies in the Fortune 100.’ She’d been checking if ‘they included their social media involvement on their homepage.’ Ochman quotes a study by Burson Masteller and her own firm indicating that 54% of Fortune 100 companies employ Twitter; […]
Nestle are used to their fair share of bad press; students the world over have seen to that. But March 2010 is when they will go into social media case study history. For anyone who’s not read the full saga, here’s the short version: a video was staged which drew a play on eating Kit-Kat […]
As we increase our personal openness and honesty via social media, so too are we appraised more as data-mining never had the chance to go so deep. Californian data-mining company Rapleaf are at the bleeding edge of social media monitoring (SMM). Short version: they track everything about you online – every comment, every review, every […]
John Battelle recently said, ‘Marketing is now like moving quicksilver. The marketer is the publisher and visa versa; the consumer is now both… that we should rethink, ‘our brand in the market’ as, ‘our conversation with the market.’ I’d like to chirp a complimentary point about synergy with product (otherwise it’s all about the sell […]
Just read Tom Asacker’s post on frustration and I needed to rebroadcast: Marketers, we need you now, more than ever, to be the voice of value creation for the benefit of your organizations and other brand constituents (customers, suppliers, communities, et al). So please don’t let the frustration, and persistence, of the Social Web ecosystem […]
WARNING: this is a lengthy diatribe on ecommerce. If online retailing isn’t your thing then run away now. If it does float your boat then grab a coffee, my friend: Scoble has been posting lately about the future of the Internet, calling it the Web 2010, others are more likely to call it Web 3.0. […]
The Times is reporting on a modern classic. The Facebook faux pas is a recent phenomenon witnessed too closely by the head of MI6 as he was outed by his wife on her Facebook wall. From the piece: …entries by his [Sir John Sawers’] wife Shelley on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising […]
Two huge media companies are looking for new top dogs this week. MySpace chief executive and co-founder, Chris DeWolfe is on his way, along with ITV’s Executive Chairman, Michael Grade. What’s remarkable is that the same candidate could be ideal for both positions, yet the view from both chairs couldn’t be more polarised. MySpace is […]
Well, that’s my prediction. They’ll stop burning dollars acquiring paper mills and fork out $750+ million for Twitter. Twitter is the most popular and certainly the most talked about social media tool of the moment, yet there’s no clear indication on how they’ll monetise the whole shebang. They raised another $35 million in venture capital […]
Seth Godin is giving his only UK talk on Tuesday. Yep, yours truly has booked a day off and got a ticket to the Big Smoke to see my man Seth. He’s not a ground-breaking intellectual – academia would never cite him like they do Philip Kotler et al (and we wouldn’t read him either). […]
Viral campaigns are an enigma. Word of mouth is, by definition, viral, but marketers want much more bang for their brand communicating buck. How can you spread your ‘message’ by engaging users (and potential clients) exponentially without devaluing your brand or using slapstick comedy? Few marketers can claim to have pulled this business magic trick […]
Twitter, much revered as THE social media application by those heavily engrossed within, also finds itself slammed as a catastrophic misspend of one’s precious time by those on the sidelines (if they’ve heard of it at all). It’s all very Yin and Yang. I got to thinking there’s a simile to be drawn with the […]