Twitter

1) Remember to charge up your battery the night before if you’re going to be doing a lot of tweeting the next day, or buy an extra battery (remember to charge that one up too).

2) First ever tweet: it’s okay to tweet ‘hi’ or about the weather. Don’t listen to everyone telling you to be interesting – it’s too difficult. You’ll get the hang of it soon anyway. Remember though that your mother, cousin or friend in Australia, might still like to receive the odd letter now and again. It’s nice to get something apart from bills or credit card applications. Read more…

The 2008 American presidential election was ground-breaking for a number of reasons; notably that it was the first ‘social media election’. Then in 2009 came the controversial Iranian election where social media played a different, but debatably equally important role. Social media is set to play an equally important role in the upcoming UK election. The question however, is whether the potential of such channels will be realised by any of the parties. Read more…

Even if you’re not a Facebook addict or regular Twitter user, you’ll know how difficult it is to escape social media. Why? Because social media is revolutionising the way that people consume content.

Social media is opening new channels of communication between brands and customers and there is a lot of potential in the social web that marketers can tap into. For example, a study earlier in the year by Penn State University showed that 20% of all tweets mentioned a brand name. Sales and marketing professionals need to be aware of these significant media consumption trends so they can tailor and target their messages as effectively as possible across a changing landscape. Read more…

Recently I’ve been thinking about the impact Twitter has had on how time is viewed from a customer service perspective.

Companies continually strive to achieve greater levels of efficiencies, extracting what insightful nuggets they can through the detailed analysis of call volumes, first time fixes, abandonment rates, average handling times and more. Customers on the other hand, armed with increasing ubiquitous smartphones and a rich plethora of tools for self-expression, are becoming ever more vocal and more demanding. Read more…

There’s probably very few people who would have missed the travel disruption caused by a certain misbehaving volcano grounding planes in the northern hemisphere and turning airports into ghost towns or hotels. Thrown into the mix there are confusing accounts of which flights have and have not been cancelled and when airports will be closed, all being made worse by a second eruption. Due to the high volume of people trying to reschedule travel arrangements, websites have been breaking left, right and centre and call centres have been inundated, making the whole process an administrative nightmare. Read more…

For a long time now, fans and foes of Twitter have speculated on how the site will make money. Well, for those of you who haven’t yet heard, you might want to brace yourself as Twitter has finally unveiled its plan  to make money, and it will be through (drum roll please) advertising! Read more…

Johannes Leonardo has launched a mysterious and (potentially) engaging social advertising campaign around New York and it will be interesting to see how New Yorkers respond to it. Read more…

An article was published the other day that questioned how worthwhile it was for companies to spend money on social media , in light of a new report that discussed the predicted increase in social media spend in 2010. According to the article, companies have spent more time on social media this year than ever before and that more companies are focusing on this medium as a marketing strategy.  
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