Mobile is Facebook’s admitted advertising Achilles’ heel because more users on mobile means fewer opportunities to serve ads owing to the way the mobile platform is set up, so with mobile monthly active users steadily increasing over computer access, especially in the 18-and-up smartphone audience in the USA (which topped 78 million unique visitors in March, meaning network reached more than 80% of all American adults via mobile in that month), it is hardly a surprise Facebook reported a drop in ad revenue during those same months. Presumably they have a squandron of developers working hard to sort the problem, but now they have floated, the clock is well and truly ticking.

This week also saw interesting data released about Twitter, with the UK coming in fourth in the ‘Twitter love’ stakes (USA is first) and stats indicating that 80% of Twitter users in the UK were accessing Twitter via mobile.

And staying on the subject of mobiles, Virgin Atlantic announced this week that some passengers will now be able to make and receive phone calls and text messages while in the air. Ironically, reaction on Twitter was less than enthusiastic, many saying that the break from mobile being the best thing about airflights!

In other news the Cabinet Office has launched social media guidance for civil servants; Foursquare now have a full history page, sort of their version of timeline showing where you have been since you joined the network; and in the hotel industry’s 5th Annual Benchmark Survey on Hotel Digital Marketing Budget Planning and Best Practices, released this week, survey results indicate that 43% hoteliers believe social media produces best results & highest ROI.

And finally social media comes to the teaching profession, with Teachers pay Teachers, an open social marketplace set up in the USA now enabling teachers to make money by selling their lesson plans and prep to other teachers, claiming that one Kindergarten teacher has earnt $700,000 by selling lesson plans online. Let’s hope they expand to the UK soon!

So while Facebook is doing the financial thing, there is a slew of news from Google this week as it continues to build up Google+.  There has been lots of conflicting reports over recent months about how many people are using Google+  and actually engaging with it as a platform, but organisations and brands are being much less cautious as a whole, with the brand pages seeing rapid growth.

This isn’t surprising, of course, as Google continues to place a greater emphasis on the platform in its search algorithm. A redesigned version of Google News, which has just gone live in the US, and will hit the UK soon, will put Google+ conversations from people’s ‘circles’ right onto the search engine’s news homepage.  And in keeping with the world’s onward march towards mobile (see this great infographic), the Google+ iPhone app has had a revamp.

Twitter has once again been showing what a powerful platform it is and how companies need to treat it with respect. Diageo, the drinks giant, was at the centre of a social media storm this week after allegations of ‘fixing’ an industry awards ceremony  in their favour against new kid on the block competitor Brewdog, resulting in the #andTheWinnerIsNot hashtag trending worldwide. President Obama received a huge amount of social support on Twitter after he made his announcement in support of Gay Marriages and, in other Twitter news, there was an interesting development in the ongoing privacy/freedom debate with Twitter protecting Occupy protesters tweets from courts in the US and arrests following the Louise Mensch story from last week.

The lead up to the 2012 London Olympics has truly started as the Olympic flame was lit in Greece this week – Ministers say that these, possible the first truly ‘digital’ Olympics, will not be immune to cyber attacks but that the UK is prepared – we do hope so -  and the Olympic athletes are to get a limited edition Samsung S3 – how fab!

Rounding up the best of the rest, Ofsted boss Michael Wilshaw wants to ban mobiles in the classroom; a new app FearSquare has been launched to alert foursquare users to crime near the venues that they are visiting; the State of Nevada has given Google a license to test its self-drive car; men are catching up with women with their online shopping; and LinkedIn are going to buy Slideshare which will be a great addition to the ‘grey suit’ of the social media world.

This week Claire, our Head of Digital, has been busy judging the CorpComms Magazine’s Digi Awards for the third year running, although sadly it didn’t include trialling Nestle’s new ‘Take a Break from social stress’ app, developed after research suggested Millennials are finding it very stressful keeping their online profiles updated… although it did include eating chocolate and looking at lots of other amazing Digital entrants, and we are look forward to hearing who was short listed and who won!

Hope your week has been as enjoyable, have a great weekend.

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Twitter has also been in the news this week for all the wrong reasons, with Louise Mensch, a member of the Commons culture, media and sport committee, hitting back at misogynist bullies who targeted her on Twitter with a stream of violent and sexist abuse after she defended Murdock. In an interview on Radio 4, Mensch (@LouiseMensch66) defended the social network, saying “It’s just a matter of calling bullies out,” she told the Today programme. “It’s not Twitter’s fault… it’s the fault of the users.”

Chief Constable Stuart Hyde, the lead on e-crime prevention for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said that the abusive Tweets directed towards Louise Mensch were “sexist bigotry at their worst”, and that they may have breached the 2003 Communications Act and the earlier Malicious Communications Act. He continued “We are taking people to court. Whilst this is the social media, it is important people should know that they are responsible and if they do not use it responsibly they will face the full force of the law.” Listen to the interview again on Audioboo

This is a matter that we hear raised as a concern by nearly every organization we work with – what happens if we get insulted or abused on social media or on our blog? – so it’s good to hear the police are taking it so very seriously.

Still on the subject of eCrime, the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) website went down on Wednesday after a mystery Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. Unusually the website has yet to come back online (Friday am), and SOCA has yet to confirm confirm if it knows the source of the attack or the motive.

In other privacy news, new evidence proves the Google engineer who designed the Street View data software had the intention to collect it for use in future Google products, and as a result the organisation may face a UK inquiry over it, says Simon Davies, director-general of Privacy International, who is calling on Scotland Yard to reopen the investigation into the matter. In America, employers who demand Facebook passwords could be fined $ 1000s and in a more sinister move, which contravenes human rights, UK bouncers have increasingly been reported as asking young clubbers to confirm their IDs by showing them their Facebook pages on their phone.

In a more social good area, Facebook is causing a boom in charitable giving and is now the top source for JustGiving donations. This is a trend we have noticed more and more in our charity client’s analytics reports, and if you are responsible for fundraising or marketing at a not for profit organization and not yet using social media in any meaningful manner or you want advice on getting your social marketing to start really gaining traction, please do get in touch, it’s one of our favourite areas!

Twitter Vice President of Products, Satya Patel, has just announced that the network has set its sights on reaching 2 billion users “by getting simpler”, which seems to mainly mean refining its Discovery feature, whereby you have people to follow recommended to you based on what Twitter thinks you are interested in. We love Twitter (and if you are just getting started with it, do read our Twitter articles here and over on the Public Technology Blog), but with a dismal Search function, regular FailWhale Outrage and *just* 140 million users today, producing 340 million tweets a day, getting 2 billion people to use Twitter at least once a month looks a little optimistic, despite its high profile and hashtags and @ signs become more embedded in everyday life.

Looks like financial temptation finally overcame Tumblr’s CEO David Karp, who this week announced that the network will now “allow advertising at $25K a pop.” Tumblr is driven by pictures rather than text, and appeals to a predominantly arty, design and fashion-led crowd, as well as huge percentage of Millennials, so that is going to be a very interesting opportunity for businesses trying to reach those niches.

Images are certainly proving to be a profitable area of the Social World, as the Instagram purchase illustrated so graphically a couple of weeks ago, and now it has been predicted that the very popular ‘Draw Something’ game app will generate $50-75 million in revenue this year for Zynga. And in what might be the world’s very first ‘Social‘ camera, NYU graduate student Matt Richardson has created a camera that spits out a written description of an image within a minute of you taking it

Seems if you want to make a profit on social media, best adhere to that old saying “A picture’s worth a thousand words”. Have a great bank holiday weekend and catch up next week.

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This is Google’s answer to services like iCloud and Dropbox and the media has been doing a great job analysing exactly what the service is and how it stacks up against what else is on the market.

Not everyone will be able to access it immediately as it is being rolled out over a period of time, but you can check here to see if it’s available to you.

More interesting developments in the publishing world this week as the trail blazers look to embrace the digital world, while more traditional publishing are getting left behind. So in the trailblazing camp, gamifying publishing seems to be the latest trend, with news that iVillage has launched a FourSquare-style rewards scheme, which iVillage are confident will motivate women. Meanwhile over in the traditional publishing camp, Johnston Press, a major regional publisher of famous titles such as The Yorkshire Post and The Scotsman, has posted large losses and has admitted that it is struggling with the impact of the ‘digital revolution’.

There’s cheering news for marketers in a report that finds that B2Bs are finally now using social media almost as much as B2Cs along with major announcements to ensure that the UK is fully engaged with all things digital. London Mayor Boris Johnson, as part of his electoral campaign is keen to make London a key part of the digital world and outlines his vision in a detailed article in Brand Republic and Martha Lane Fox is to spearhead Go ON UK, a cross-sector partnership set up to bring the benefits of the Internet “to every individual and every organisation in every community across the UK”.

More evidence this week that there’s absolutely no doubt that the future is mobile with O2 being the latest major player to announce a money app to make payments from mobiles ‘as easy as texting’, which is good timing as a new report suggests that 1 in 6 Britons now use their smartphone for buying things and 25% of all UK consumer spend is spent online.

In the political arena, the former head of GCHQ  admitting that intelligence had not kept up with the power of social media. And the French showed how they could easily side-step official rules on election reporting by using ’allo ‘allo’ style  WWII code on Twitter to bring out early information on the French Presidential elections. In the UK political parties are in a scrum to see who can be seen to be the toughest on protecting children from adult content on the internet.

And finally this week, Google really excelled themselves with the celebration of the 132^nd birthday of Gideon Sundback who invented the zip.  Their Google Doodle, which allowed users to unzip the home page, has received adulation all round!

Now attention has been turned to two tech giants, Google and Oracle, going head-to-head on patents and copyrights with the whole future of the Android mobile operating system potentially at stake, although Oracle may settle for a whopping damages payment.

A regular topic on this blog for the last year or so  is, who is going to pay for content on the internet?  This week, Tumblr has announced that it is going to start accepting adverts, having previously said they wouldn’t, and top digital trade publication, New Media Age has announced that virtually all of its content is now going behind a paywall although recently they themselves covered the story that most publishers were abandoning them for being unsuccessful, which is somewhat ironical.

A report out this week said that banks were struggling to get to grips with social media with only 14% of them updating online content every week, while another study found that 90% of CIOs are still not Social. Why are we not surprised?! We are constantly amazed at the slack approach taken by organisations to their social media, either not doing it at all or doing it very badly. Indeed we were prompted to write another blog about it recently outlining the 5 golden rules for social marketing to help point the uninitiated in the right direction.

And only just over a month away (26^th May) is the change to the law regarding cookies on websites, which means there’s still  just enough time to take a look at your own site to see if your business complies. Indeed, the whole freedom/privacy/rights on the internet rumbles on and The Guardian has published a list of internet freedom fighters, while MPs have this week called for automatic IP blocks on home computers to stop surge in children watching adult material.

In other news, there has been another launch of a mobile pay system – another step towards your mobile becoming your main ‘computer’; Six out of 10 Wikipedia business entries contain factual errors; more Apple rumours about a new mini iPad and the new iPhone 5, which apparently will be made from Liquidmetal and therefore super-strong and superslim (here’s hoping); and Branchout, the Facebook app which is careers/job/recruitment-based, has reached 25 million users – LinkedIn watch out?;  and with less than 100 days to go to the Olympics, it will be the first global sporting event to be truly social.

Excitingly, innovative leaders in the public sector are starting to be recognised for their success, too. For example, Northumberland Council has just won an award for the way it utilised social media as part of its winter alerts service. More than 13,500 residents are now actively using its service to keep up to date with issues such as school closures or problems on the roads via Facebook and Twitter.

Experts say this is the way all public sector bodies from councils to colleges should be going, which is fine in theory, but the biggest challenge can be how to start, so I have pulled together Best Practice Social Media Tips for the public sector:

1. Who are you talking to?

Sounds basic, but by knowing who you are talking to, you can concentrate on communicating effectively with that segment and be able to respond quickly and effectively

2. Communicate – don’t lecture

It’s called social for a reason. Nonetheless, most companies, let alone public bodies, are still very guilty of push marketing, lecturing or preaching, rather than communicating, interacting and responding. If your designated bloggers or Tweeters don’t know the difference, you’re likely to be preaching to thin air as your potential audience will just tune out and not listen

3. Which social channel?

Each social channel has a different personality and different use. LinkedIn, for example, is very much for people who want to network professionally and for profiling their careers, so is particularly good for educational bodies to use to help their graduates, for example. Facebook is ideal as a social hub, where everything can be bought together as it has more daily users of a wider demographic and more equal age/gender range than any other.

• Twitter is a high speed news network ideal for communicating directly or sharing real time news.
• Pinterest and Flickr are great for visually impactful messages and events, as is
• YouTube, which is also is brilliant for training and information videos, and
• AudioBoo is best for the visually impaired or for those who want to be socially connected on the go as they can tune in and listen on their headphones.

You can have a presence on all the channels, but then tailor your output to suit each one and specific audiences you are trying to reach, or you can just pick and choose two or three to concentrate on initially and expand as you start to feel comfortable.

4. Be prepared

Make sure you have a social media policy document in place and that your staff know how you expect them to behave online (usually just as you would expect them to behave offline) and what is fine to share/say and what isn’t. Be clear about how you deal with any negative comments online, and make sure everyone is aware of the set procedures. Also think about what might happen in the worse case scenario and have a ‘social media crisis plan’ on file in place in order to inform and minimalise speculation and panic

5. Professional but personable

Maintain your professional standards with attractive profiles that are on brand for your organisation and provide the same courteous service you would strive to provide face to face. Yet you also need to remember this is social and people like to talk to people, so let your designated social media managers be themselves within the designated guidelines

6. Testing, testing: oops, you’re live on air!

On social media, more than just about anywhere else, it can be all too easy to be lulled in to a false sense that no one is listening, or that you are just talking to a select group of other users. Yet your social profiles are forever public facing broadcasting unless they are locked down, and should be treated with the same care as you would treat any other public facing communication, and with due respect for the fact it changes very quickly. So 1) always be professional, 2) only participate after relevant training, 3) have regularly updated guidelines and 4) NEVER let temporary staff loose on it

7. Ban the tumbleweed

And finally, do make sure that once you start you continue – no ignoring anybody who asks a question or for information via your social media profiles or suddenly going quiet. One of the worst things any organisation can do is to have a social presence that is empty, inactive and as quiet as an abandoned ghost town with tumbleweed blowing up the main street.

Being social is all about responding, communicating and sharing information. As a public sector organisation it is your duty to do all three, so it is a potentially a match made in Heaven, so long as you make sure you do it right – and if you want some help, don’t hesitate to get in touch on hello@themediamarketingco.com.

This was first published on PublicTechnology.net.

However, in their quest to promote themselves on social media and reach out to their existing and potential customers, and ideally before they even send a Tweet or post a Facebook status, businesses should remember these Five Golden Rules:

1. Understand how digital has forever changed the marketing world
It’s a very different mindset to traditional sales, marketing and PR and if you as a marketing professional fail to understand this and adjust your strategy accordingly, you will FAIL.

2. Know your customers
Digital has made it essential that you really understand your customers at a deep level – who they are, why they might want to buy from you, why they don’t, what they really need. And don’t ever assume you know without asking or that they want what you are trying to sell them.

3. Be TRULY social
By this I mean, turn your marketing/sales strategy around so you don’t use ‘push marketing’ at all. Instead focus on the customer’s output, their buying process and on ‘pulling’ your business into their consciousness at every touch point, from the things they read, what they say, what they share, where they go, what they like doing and what their networks are doing (people are far more likely to buy something if a friend or contact recommend it or are already using it).

4. Treat your staff as fellow adults
Encourage employee participation through their social networks rather than blocking them off in the workplace and trying to stop them talking about you online. If you treat them as adults and, with a social strategy, invite them to share and engage with you, the business, via their own social networks, this will immediately leverage your online reach, ensure the whole company is working as a team, and so build staff loyalty and engagement and, ultimately, should increase profit. Reward that effort and see the circle of goodness increase 10 fold.

5. Map and track the buying process
Don’t make assumptions about what is happening – use analytics wisely and consistently to find out!

digital surveillance proposed by govt

Happy Easter, Passover and full moon (depending on your belief systems), hope you are having a good one so far.

The major news for the UK was the governments plans to increase blanket internet surveillance, which has managed to achieve what Labour can’t and get pretty the whole country united in protest. Most experts reckon what they are proposing is practically impossible to achieve and if they persist could turn the UK into somewhere resembling China, which seems a tad stupid to say the least, considering the internet is currently the biggest growth area of retail sales plus this government’s oft-repeated commitment to the digital economy (such as Digital Shoreditch etc). If they force it through it will have a huge impact on our industry and not for the better, so if you haven’t already objected, please consider doing so!

Continuing talking about online retail for a moment, Groupon’s stock have hit an all time low, and Amazon have been found to be avoiding UK corporate tax on £7bn sales, which seems hugely unfair when you think of how much of our retail business and high street stores they are directly responsible for undercutting and replacing. Let’s hope HMRC change the tax rules so companies have to pay UK tax if they sell in this country, regardless of where the company is registered else it’s going to just get worse for our home economy.

In other news, Google’s project glass has been setting the online world buzzing, with most people torn between liking it and being worried/excited about the potential for it to be turned into one massive advertising network, with the usual suspects predicting it’ll just be a huge belly flop.

Advertising does seem to be in the news a fair bit this week generally, with Skype taking a swipe at Facebook and Twitter in their new $12million advertising campaign, and over in the USA Belvedere Vodka has come under fierce fire for it’s sexist adverts that appear to promote sexual assault.

In specific digital marketing news a recent industry report found that the top 20% B2B companies (Best in Class) report that they generate 17% of their leads from social media and an annual company revenue growth of 20%. Always nice to know we’ve been right all along about the importance of social marketing for B2B companies!

However, it does seem that Google has a way to go before it can properly claim to be part of the Social Media Top Table, with only a minority of marketers (two fifths) currently reporting using Google+ according to a recent report by Social Media Examiner. The report found that the more experienced the marketer, the more likely to they were to use Google+ – and if you are one of those experienced marketers, or would like some advice on using Google+ if you aren’t, please do come and link up!

In what might prove to be a landmark case for blogging generally, the Huffington Post bloggers have lost their legal battle for a share of the AOL millions – the judge ruled that the “unpaid contributors knew the position”, and he rejected the case ‘with prejudice’, which basically means the bloggers won’t be able to bring the case again. It does, yet again, highlight the more general problems viz a viz journalists versus the bloggerati, what should be paid for and what shouldn’t, and what rights unpaid content creators have. Specifically it would seem pertinent for individual bloggers to make sure that they set standards in all their dealings with the media right from the very beginning of the relationship.

And finally, on a lighter note, Variety has announced that Ashton Kutcher is to play Steve Jobs in two forthcoming biopics – Joshua Michael Stern is to direct a script by Matt Whiteley, and filming is likely to start in May. Looking forward to it already!

Best Practice: How the Met’s shown us how to do good social media

There hasn’t been much forthcoming from the powers that be in the UK, but employment lawyers have said that it is not illegal. A worrying development in the privacy row and one which no doubt we will come back to again very soon.

MPs have also been looking at privacy and a cross-party committee is urging the government to consider introducing legislation that would force Google to censor its search results in order to block material that a court has found to be in breach of someone’s privacy.

Britons look at news on the move, that is on their smartphones, much more than other nationalities in Europe apparently so it’s good news that WIFI is coming to London Overground and that an incredibly fast 4G is on its way soon.

As we keep saying, the future for business, and therefore marketing, is mobile, so anything that makes it easier and better is good news for all of us.  And the news that Mashable has linked up with The Atlantic to present digital/tech/social news alongside mainstream political and cultural stories is just a further indication of how deeply embedded digital is becoming with everything.

Another high profile story this week was the jailing of student Liam Stacey who tweeted racial abuse following the on-pitch collapse of Bolton Wanderers footballer Fabrice Muamba.   Stacey, who is obviously a bright young man of the age group frequently chosen by businesses to be their social interns, was reported by many Twitter users and following his swift arrest he has landed himself a prison sentence. This not the first case of its kind, nor do we think it will be the last, as it is becoming increasingly clear that the internet is not quite the Wild West that it used to be and regulators and law-enforcers are catching up and you should never underestimate the reach of social media because somebody WILL see it. So sticking to the ASA guidelines and having a social media policy in place for all your staff is becoming non-negotiable for all businesses who don’t want to run afoul of the law.

Facebook make their new timelines obligatory for all groups and business pages this weekend and we are already seeing a reported rise in engagement. Seems that, as ever, consumers love things that look, well, lovely.

Over in Google world, this week saw the launch of Google Consumer Surveys, a new product businesses can use to survey online audiences and publishers can host in place of paywalls or ads to generate revenue from site visitors. Interesting income generator with no end of applications, though whether it annoys or engages consumers is another question – we’ll be watching that one closely. Google also has a new app store which you can see by pushing the new ‘Play’ tab which appeared on the Google toolbar this week

The troubled Blackberry manufacturer, RIM, has announced its intention to concentrate on its traditional market of business people rather than trying to go head-to-head with the iPhone and Android phones – good call!

In other news Amazon is to launch its new Kindle Touch in the UK and if you have an awful lot of money burning a hole in your pocket, you might like to visit Harrods’ new technology gallery, but be warned, it is very, very expensive (but lovely window shopping).

And just to  prove that there really are no boundaries to the applications that social media can be used for, Doctors at Houston’s Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital made medical and social media history by live-tweeting an open heart surgery for the first time ever.

And finally, if you’re feeling a bit aggrieved about something or somebody, there is now a Facebook ‘enemies’ app which allows you to express your dislike of something.  The developers of EnemyGraph reckon that it could be useful to brands to show where they are getting things wrong – but most people reckon that Facebook will take it down before too long, so enjoy it while you can…