Online shopping is making present buying a breeze for those of us that don’t want to brave the busy shops this Christmas. But is social media changing the way we buy? Are we becoming more and more influenced by our peers on social platforms such as…

By Kate Eglinton Last summer whilst researching graduate positions in communications and public relations, I was drawn in by the social media buzz that has taken the PR industry by storm in recent years.  Social media seemed to be big business. With my…

The immediate future dashboard has been tracking festive online activity in order to bring you some irrefutable predictions* and scientifically proven* observations for Christmas 2010. Earlier we found that while ‘presents for men’ was the top search on Google Insights, ‘gifts for women’ was a breakthrough search. As…

This year, it seems Christmas is truly social. And for many brands social media marketing is definitely playing a big role in the festive push to consumers. M&S and John Lewis are integrating TV with their social media efforts, whilst Argos is pushing out…

Don’t fancy the hassle of overcrowded shopping malls this Christmas? Do your shopping via social media! Here are some top tips:   Let someone else try before you buy Worried you might be buying a turkey? Check out product reviews before you buy. Retailers like…

Did you know that… 1 in 3 men wait until Christmas Eve to finish their shopping. 56% of Americans sing holiday carols to their pets. And 17% of people who Christmas shop via mobile, will be doing it on the bus. This is the social shopping Christmas story ……

When Santa Claus comes to town, the rules are simple. You watch out, you don’t cry and you don’t pout. I put to you that in 2009 the social media marketeers ignored every single one of these rules, pedalling Christmas campaigns that involved risks, made people cry and yes,…

It’s that time of year again: lists, retrospectives, best ofs, highs and lows. Take twelve months of experience and package it up into a pithy blog post or a commemorative special issue. I am, frankly, powerless to resist. My list of the top ten albums of 2010 has been under…

Recently, Econsultancy published a piece on ten great e-commerce product pages. Following our research into the social shopping explosion we wanted to find out exactly how ‘social’ some of these retailers are. All of which will be popular destinations for consumers this Christmas. We’ve…

Because we’re slightly geeky and we like to spot a trend, we’ve been keeping an eye on a few key Christmas search terms over on our Christmas dashboard page. Amongst other things (like kids’ presents and favourite Christmas puddings), we’ve been monitoring Google searches for “Christmas presents.” For the…

You may have heard that Google has changed its search algorithm and with that change, instilled the word Abuserank forever into the minds of SEO experts. According to Google they were spurred into action by the story of Clarabelle Rodriguez and the shocking (and by shocking I…

As a social media agency, we’ve known for a while that the UK lead in online purchasing but recent research from Ofcom demonstrates the extent of this trend. According to the fifth international Communications Market report, UK internet users spend…