Social Media, Digital Marketing & PR Agency

Digital publishing on iPad

First we had the Kindle from Amazon, and then Apple’s iPad, both offering ‘books on the go’ in a small nifty packet. Despite the price difference, there isn’t really much between them – Kindle is cheaper, better for students (you can take notes and highlight), and has the slightly bigger library (88,000+), while the iPad looks more gorgeous (obviously), has the neater app, and also has a brand new iPad-only magazine.

So is it a step forward for all things digital and companies wanting to market and advertise in that medium? Of course. Is it the death knell of ‘proper’ books? Well, I would be seriously surprised, at least in the foreseeable future, and to be honest I really wish the newspaper babies would endeavour to keep their doomglooming to themselves just for once. If history is anything to go by, then the new medium will simply slide in alongside the existing ones, so those who read books and magazines will continue to read books and magazines, in whichever format they come.

Tweetminster

At the beginning of the year the 2010 UK Elections were being described as the one where social media came of age. While the post election analysis did really not to bear that ‘key influence’ out (that fell to TV instead), what did happen was what always happens with Twitter ie it was bang on trend in real time with Tweetminster, a social aggregate site set up to make ‘politics social’ and analyse all the political tweets, predicting a hung parliament as early as 10th April.

And what became very clear during and after the election was that this was a very ‘social election’ in so far as it was a story about editors frustrated with the way public sentiment did not conform with their editorial line and how, if they had only tuned in to ‘social politics’, they would not have been so completely astounded when the Lib-Con coalition stepped into power on 7th May.

Back in April MPs voiced anger at the Digital Economy bill – aimed at supporting artists’ copyright and tackling illegal file-sharing – being rushed into law by a majority of 142 votes in the period before the elections. The Digital Economy Bill requires internet service providers to send letters to any of their subscribers linked to alleged infringements, while ISPs are able to suspend accounts of offenders.

However it doesn’t seem to have worked, since in October UK ISPs BT and Plusnet refused to hand over subscriber data to lawyers acting for independent record label, Ministry of Sound, and in November BT revealed it had deleted the records of 80 percent of the 250,000 names and addresses it had on file.

Ministry of Sound were said to be “speechless”.

The myth of Social Media being a solely ‘young people’s pursuit’ and therefore not worth devoting a business’s time or energy was seriously kicked in to touch in 2010. On Facebook in the US alone, the ‘Silver Market’ (55) grew by an astonishing 922.7%, and many of these were female ie people who have money to spend. The average Facebook users Likes 2 Pages (businesses or brands) a month and Likes a further 9 pieces of content. Just demonstrates how out of touch many older (often male, sorry!)  business people can be, especially if they don’t use it themselves.

That’s Edinburgh Fringe on Twitter, Twinge, just in case you weren’t up to speed and thought we were being rude. The result of a partnership between The Guardian and The Edinburgh Fringe Festival because, as they put it, “Do the shows you’ve seen at Edinburgh deserve some positive karma?” and revolved around rating performances in real time via Twitter using the Ed Twinge fringe review service, which was, in effect a hashtag Twitter party or Tweetup’ such as we have all come to know and love, but this time publishing them on the web and keeping count of the tweets for each performer.

People attending the shows who wanted to start reviewing shows, simply visited the Ed Twinge website and logged in using their Twitter account details, typed the name of the performer hey were reviewing, and entered their verdict on the act in 130 characters or fewer (the remaining 10 characters being reserved for the ‘edtwinge’ hashtag). Shows were then rated in order of ‘karma’ – to see the 2010 list, visit the http://edtwinge.com website.

In 2010 Twitter became the vehicle of choice for all things catastrophic.

The Chilean Earthquake, the South Pacific Tsunami, the Icelandic Volcanic Ashcloud, even when a 7.8 magnitude struck China, the news unfolded before our eyes on Twitter. Before it was on CNN, the BBC, even before the United States Geological Survey (which handles earthquake data) had the information, Twitter was on it.

While the mainstream media scrambled to put up their ‘breaking news’ headlines, on Twitter we saw pictures, maps, videos all being sent in real-time, as well as helpful hashtags (information centres) established.

How? Its users. All hail Social.

You can just imagine the brainstorming session… “hmmm this survey says less than 10% of the three million office workers who buy a sandwich at lunchtime would think of buying crisps to go with it, that’s insane, everyone knows any sandwich is better with Walkers!”

Silence, then a *snigger* from one of the junior creatives… “What?” “Oh nothing, just my gran lives in Sandwich and I suddenly had this vision of a massive packet of crisps landing on her doorstep…”

Cue Gary Lineker surprising Sandwich’s football team, Marco Pierre White making sandwiches, Jensen Button driving the taxi, Al Murray and Pamela Anderson serving in the pub and JLS performing at the sixth form college.

Viral? Of course it went viral! 1.6 million views, three million minutes of footage, and increased crisp sales by 1.5 million packs. Result.