Better Brand Agency

Core Message Specialists

Posts Tagged ‘Web 2.0’

Social Media: Beyond the Hype

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Date: Thursday 29 October
Time: 5.30 – 8pm followed by food, drinks and networking
Venue: Great North Museum: Hancock, NE2 4PT
Cost: FREE to Codeworks Connect members; £20 to non-members

Everyone and anyone is talking up social media right now. Asking you to “join the conversation”, “engage” with your customers rather than shouting at them. And telling you that if you don’t use these tools you’re at a major disadvantage.
But what’s the truth about social media? Can they really help your business? And how, exactly? (more…)

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Charities are making social media work hard for them

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

In tough economic times people and businesses are less able to give as freely as they may have once given, charity unfortunately stays at home!

As with any business in a recession charities need to be where their audience is or they run the risk of being left behind, and it’s clear some smaller charities are struggling to change lanes and adopt social media as a key part of their strategy. Some charities, however, have made the leap and have been reaping the rewards of new social opportunities.

Age Concern with partner Innocent Smooties developed ‘The Big Knit’. Started in 2003 the campaign has raised, to date, over £600k for older people in the colder winter months. The campaign now includes Flickr, YouTube and Blog channels which enable the people who’ve got behind the campaign to be part of the story. Clever widgets such as the ‘Hatometer’, which can be embedded into supporters blogs and websites, shows how many hats have been knitted so far. (more…)

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Living through a revolution

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

I read a piece recently by Clay Shirky, who in a blog post entitled ‘Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,’ reflected on the nature of revolutions. Periods of time when old ‘stuff’ was no longer relevant to us and new ‘stuff’ couldn’t come along fast enough to replace it. That feels like now doesn’t it?

The edges of our media space are expanding faster than our ability to make sense of them, of new technologies, of how people use them and of the shake out, that will mean some old media will fall by the wayside.

But this is an unravelling story seen from two very different perspectives. The user, swept along by the rush of the crowd to try new media, to make that media fit their lifestyle and the marketer, trying to position a brand where its’ target customer is. (more…)

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Sign posting people down ‘The Funnel’

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
Social Media Funnel 

Social Media Funnel

I’ve seen lots of social media maps, some good some not so good.

The problem is they sit there in lofty isolation, a sea of mostly unfamiliar names and quirky identities.  They are a secret cypher known only to social media cool kids it seems. These maps are not connected to the real world (The one in which hard pressed marketing professionals are fighting hard for their budgets and their jobs) in any recognisable way. We’re missing an opportunity here and, if we’re honest, being a little bit condescending to boot. Another thing, social media buzz words are such a crock! Real people don’t talk like that!

(more…)

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Growing your brand’s digital footprint

Friday, March 13th, 2009
Growing your Digital Footprint

Growing your Digital Footprint

We find ourselves drawing this diagram all the time for clients when we’re talking about social media so we thought we’d reproduce it here and get some feedback.

Conversations tend to go something like, “Why social media?”.

After introducing them to the idea that engaging with audiences, listening and harvesting feedback, gaining insights into audience thinking and breaking down corporate barriers is the most rewarding business change event they’ll ever implement it’s much much simpler to draw it.

(more…)

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