Social Media Immediate Future

Social Media

With the new CAP code coming into effect on the 1st March, the ASA has today launched a new media campaign in order to raise awareness of the code’s extension to cover content (including user generated) on websites and owned social media platforms. Whilst there are still…

We like this visual representation of the size of the internet, wow is it big!…

So this year I was back in Vegas. No, not for the gambling or the nightlife (not primarily anyway), but to provide support to our client Sony Europe during their launch activity around CES. Yes, it’s…

Last night I went to the hairdressers. I paid with a ‘recommend a friend’ voucher; and I left with a 10% off my next cut token. And a few for my friends. The haircut was good – and the fact that I got a good deal made it even better.

There’s been a flurry of activity and attention around the rapidly growing question and answer site, Quora, and this week it hit the mainstream media. For anyone who’s missed the news, here’s a brief introduction, and some of the opportunities and risks that we have identified: What…

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…

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…

As we move into December and with all the attention turning to Christmas, the social media stories that hit our headlines in November may be a distant memory to you. So in case you’ve forgotten, here’s a round-up of all the social media stories that got us tweeting in November.

Brands on Facebook are a lot like teenagers in high school; both crave popularity. Conventional wisdom teaches us that to be popular you need to be seen fraternising with the cool kids. A recent study by…

I’m not claiming to have come up with the notion that your customers write your brand and your employees write your company culture, but it’s one I keep coming back to. If the brand is a promise – setting the expectation of an experience – then to be fulfilled, someone…

I watched the Trip on BBC2 last night. I laughed, I had a little think, I may have even drooled a bit over the Hipping Hall seven course tasting menu that formed the backdrop for Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s inspired back and forth comedy master class.

Our social shopping research revealed a high propensity for influencers [and consumers] to want rewards for recommending a brand or reviewing a product/service. There is, unsurprisingly, a high demand for incentives that discount (75%). But the intriguing insight is how this is coupled…

One of the most intriguing trends emerging from the social shopping explosion is the re-positioning of the consumer as product expert; the level of trust we now place on strangers. A recent post on ReadWriteWeb provided some further statistical evidence of this movement with specific reference…

As brands adopt and implement more social media marketing in house, so the demand for enhancing social skills and capabilities is growing. But building social capabilities takes more than a one day training course. Perfecting your social media…

We at immediate future feel it’s only right to flag Will and Kate’s wedding engagement this week. Over the past couple of days #royalwedding has been the number one trending topic on Twitter, followed by Kate Middleton at number two and Prince William at number three. As…

The conversion from “like” to purchase is currently a hot topic for brands seeking to optimise social media opportunities; and recent research from YouTube, supported by the IAB, has highlighted the magnitude of this challenge. 60% of people who “like” or…

Love it or hate it, the X Factor has taken to our screens again and the hype around the show is even bigger than ever. From now until Christmas, the British public (willingly or forced) eat, sleep and breathe the X Factor as it not only dominates…

There’s a bit of a quirk emerging in the retail research report detail that, as a social media agency, we’re interested in exploring. It involves fashion. And women. And how we can’t get enough of talking about our clothing – yet we seem to have quite a clear idea…

There is much debate about whether social media can generate a return on investment. It is certainly a hot topic given the increasing investment in social media activity. As a social media agency we work with…

Can you believe it, it’s the end of October already. Summer days are officially over and the Christmas build up is upon us. We’ve put together a summary of the top social media stories this month, for your delectation and in case you’ve been stuck down a hole for the…

Earlier this week Google added a subtle, but interesting addition to its search function. For some search terms, news results are now displaying a ‘shared by’ number alongside the link. For the searches I’ve tried so far, these ‘shares’ only relate to Twitter but I’ve seen other people…

You may have noticed that we’ve been had a very retail focused week here! As a leading social media agency we’re particularly interested in how social is changing the way we shop. Given this focus, here’s…

Developing brand loyalty and encouraging repeat sales is a challenge for online retailers, particularly in an increasingly competitive and crowded marketplace. With the ability to move between retailers at the click of a mouse and with a multitude of comparison sites for the savvy shopper, encouraging brand loyalty can…

Today we are launching our report on social shopping and its impact on consumer behaviour. Online retail has traditionally been characterised by price-driven sales and purchase-driven consumers. The focus, for retailers, has been on engaging the…

I attended the interesting, informative and insightful Social Collective (see #socol for tweets from the event) last week. One of the subjects touched upon was how far negative comments/activity on social media impacted a brand’s reputation. It got me thinking about some of the brand “gaffes” that…

I am always keen to research and review a new industry trend or topic, therefore, I wanted to draw your attention to a new kid on the social media block – Geomium! With over 550 million users, Facebook is undisputedly the cream of the crop, but a relatively…

“The key to social commerce is understanding the roles of the social consumer and the parts they play in the grand production of your marketplace.”[1] By 2012, online retail sales in the UK are predicted to hit £44.9bn. And social is changing the way we shop. In 2007,…

In August 2001 Victoria Beckham went on stage with her lip pierced. The piercing became an overnight sensation, with hordes of young girls (so the papers said) rushing out to get the look. When the piercing was revealed as a fake, certain echelons…

We’re very pleased to let you know that at last night’s Reputation Online awards immediate future and Sony Europe picked up the ‘Best use of online media/blogger relations’ gong for 2009’s Twilight Football campaign. It’s a just reward for the team…

This year I finally made it to IFA! After two years of organising press trips and managing them from the office, I was allowed out to help support the Sony Europe (client) PR team with the mammoth job of co-ordinating their…

Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to attend a great event, hosted by the London Press Club and Women in Journalism, with Carole Stone, the Queen of Networking herself, as a guest speaker. Having heard so much about Carole Stone, her…

Last week I attended a pretty insightful WOMMA UK talk where Dr. Paul Marsden presented his latest thinking on The Rise of Social Commerce: Converting Conversations to Commerce. For those of you that don’t know him, Marsden is a renowned digital marketer, author and social psychologist. He…

A few weeks ago Google‘s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, suggested people may be forced to change their names in order to escape youthful misdemeanours immortalised online on social media sites, like…

So it’s official. Facebook has moved into the location-sharing space in the UK. At the time of writing there are already 150 million Places users at this stage across Japan, UK and US. Everyone is probably familiar with what Facebook Places is, but just to recap. It’s…

The Pope is here in the UK today, but where is he in social media land? I thought I would do a quick check on some of the big networks and see what kind of presence the Holy Father has.One quick search and we can see he…

Mashable have just written about the facebookification of twitter. We’d been having the same conversation in our office. With the launch of the new Twitter coming out of nowhere and then building into a frenzy of energy, the introduction to the next generation of twitter has been…

A progressive US cancer charity has become the first organisation – so says Mashable – to accept Facebook Credits in place of a donation. The Stand Up 2 Cancer National Telethon, which was aired in the States on Friday night, gave viewers the chance…

With rumours of a Facebook “stalker button” circulating right now, once again questions are being raised on the necessity and safety of a button which effectively lets you monitor individual’s online movements without their permission. The fear of a Big Brother style entity has…

Another weekend, another football sex scandal splashed all over the front of the Sunday tabloids. This time it’s the turn of Wayne Rooney who allegedly paid for sex with a prostitute whilst his wife Coleen was pregnant. Whatever the truth behind the allegations, the social media world has…

On Wednesday, we blogged about the new ASA regulations and some of the questions that it raised in relation to communications in the online space. It caused a bit of a stir. Whilst marketing, PR and social media professionals all seem to concur that ensuring vulnerable…

Yesterday Apple launched their first social network, Ping. Less than 24 hours later this new platform has received extremely mixed reviews and users are already highlighting issues with the system. With numerous social networking sites already…

Things are going great for Katy Perry as of late and with more than 3.5 million followers on Twitter, the ‘California girl’ isn’t afraid of using a little social media to create some online buzz around her new album, Teenage Dream. Record label Capitol…

The extension of the ASA’s CAP code to cover digital marketing communications – both on brand’s own websites, but also through social media, has been driven by a need to close the gap related to companies’ claims online, in particular to regulate marketing to children. There is…

If I said the name Mary Bale or Cat Bin Lady last week, you probably wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Before now, Mary Bale was just your normal, everyday person…until she decided to throw a cat in a bin! Unfortunately for Ms Bale, her actions were caught on…

I was casting my eye over the Facebook Places logo this morning, yes I know I have no life, and noticed something a little odd. Under the pink marker there is definitely a number 4 inside a square. Go on have a look yourself.

So Facebook Places finally comes out of the closet. At first read it looks pretty good, and when you go to the iPhone app it stands proud in the middle of your phone screen. What it has over other location services such as Foursquare…

If you’re living in the UK like the team at immediate future, you’ll no doubt be enjoying a bit of classic British summertime – it’s August, and you need a coat, scarf and wellies to go anywhere. It’s frankly rubbish outside, so why not stay in and get everything you…

https://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/11/unemployment-and-employment-statistics-recession https://www.reputationdefender.com/product

With Foursquare now topping two million users across the world, the location-based social network has launched its own online store, giving die hard fans the chance to buy Foursquare memorabilia. Products on offer include a mayor crown t-shirt, button badges and branded stickers. The new store is…

The lines between PR and SEO are becoming ever more blurred. Back in February, Matt on his InfluenceFinder blog asked “Is PR the next SEO or SEO the next PR?” Yesterday I came across a new eConsultancy Q&A with John Straw…

Earlier this week Twitter announced a new feature for US mobile users, ‘Fast Follow.’ Twitter’s blog gives all the details but to summarise in a nutshell, Fast Follow will allow anyone to sign up to receive Twitter alerts via mobile SMS. Clearly aimed at passive users, Fast…

With a new football season underway and an eagerly anticipated Premier League campaign due to start this weekend, I’ve been considering my consumption of the global game recently and how it’s changed. Not just for individuals, but for brands as well. Everyone knows football is big business…

Is it just me or is everyone talking about crowdsourcing at the moment? Every meeting or event I go to, it comes up. Crowdsourcing advertising (see T-Mobile, Berocca, Hyundai etc.) has been around for a while, providing ad agencies and brands with a new…

With Facebook having just announced it recently hit the half billion user mark and with Twitter declaring this week that it received its 20 billionth tweet, it’s hard to comprehend that there may be another phenomenon biting at the heels…

For years we’ve been told that the internet and new technology is stopping traditional face to face communication. Parents have been warned that if their kids spend too much time surfing the net and chatting on social networking sites they’ll become void…

In a recent online poll by Faxo.com, the public was asked where they would most like popstar, Justin Bieber, to tour. The public said North Korea. When ‘the public’ cast its vote on July 7th, it was, however, predominantly made up of fans of the online bulletin board, 4chan.org, which encouraged visitors to hijack the poll and manipulate the results.

In this week’s New Media Age we find eBay talking down social commerce. This seems a bit strange to me given it is the leading light in social retail.Let’s think about that for a minute, the online auction site has made…

We are in the midst of the 2010 Tour de France and the race has come down to just two riders. Andy Schleck is just eight seconds behind “Berty the Accountant” (Alberto Contador)…

Facebook is expected to reach the very impressive 500 million user milestone this week. Putting this half billion member mark in perspective, The Washington Post reports that, “the population inhabiting Facebook now equals that of the United States, Japan and Germany combined. Or, two…

Image via Wikipedia As I ponder England’s dispirited performance in the World Cup, or to be more honest, listen to my colleagues discuss it, I wonder about what makes us great. How can we be our best? Apparently, the…

I recently attended a WOM UK briefing run by Reed Smith on the subject of ‘the benefits and legal risks of Word of Mouth Marketing in Social Media.’ One of the subjects touched upon was moderation; when inviting comment from the public, how much…

So I probably should have got round to writing this last week, but seeing as I’m STILL mentioning Social Media Influence in about 90% of my conversations, I’ve decided it does warrant a post. Social Media Influence 2010 was held at London’s Marriott Hotel…

Ask any PR or advertising professional about the value of having a story to bring a campaign to life and it’s recommended that you be seated comfortably, ready to listen, with a very sympathetic look on your face. Whereas authors and journalists have the pleasure of…

Taking a look at the evolution of social media as a communications tool over the past year, it is clear that one thing in particular has changed, businesses now take it seriously and include in their communications strategy. Brands now automatically lose their shine with customers if they do not…

In this day and age of social networking, many PRs are now beginning to rely too heavily on email and instant messenger to sell-in their stories to the media. Gone are the days of the telephone and the hour long lunch briefing. Now it seems, we are becoming guilty of…

Back in the day, we were taught not to mix business with pleasure. These days - with the help of Web 2.0 - the two worlds have collided to form an altogether more social way of doing business.

Sentiment around a brand online is held up as one of the key cornerstones of any social media measurement framework. Just driving up the volume of chatter around your brand is no good – if that chatter is all about what a terrible organisation you are. But, one of the…

Facebook is a huge success, we all know that. But are major brands being blinded by the sheer volume of people using the channel? First it was Levis who started using Facebook’s latest “like” functionality to allow people to…

Once every four years the whole country goes a bit crazy for a few months. Flags get attached to cars, people with little or no interest in football suddenly get wrapped up in pub debates about who exactly should be England’s third-choice goalkeeper, and businesses the length and breadth of…

As we all know, for some time now, media-savvy companies have been taking full advantage of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, for a combination of brand-building, direct sales, customer service and PR. This has left us all wondering what will be the next big ‘thing’. Could it be the controversial Chatroulette?…

Times they are a changin’, or so it seems. The powerhouse of the internet that is Google has a pretender to its crown. Facebook has managed to gain a level of momentum that could well see it take over as the most…

Having some issues with a new service we’d just subscribed to, I was frustrated to find that I’d have to wait nine hours to call a helpline based in the US. Turning to Twitter, I found @jivesupport and pinged them a tweet asking for…

This ash cloud has been quite a strain, my wife and baby are still stuck in Dubai five days after they were due to fly home. The good thing is that they are staying with friends and have a great support network. What it has shown me is how great…

Hopefully you follow a few of the members of the immediate future team who have their own personal Twitter feeds, but for the first time we’ve set up an official company presence: Tweets by iftweeter If you’re…

Everyone knows what press trips are about right? A chance to jet off to some sun-kissed location, get drunk with your journalist mates and generally avoid doing work for a few days. It’s all a big laugh. Well, no actually. Not always, anyway. Especially not when the trip has eco-conscious…

This week I enjoyed ‘An Evening with Rufus Wainwright’ at Sadlers Wells in London. Watching the very unusual first half of the performance, I was mulling over the power of the performer, the generosity of the audience, the nature of being an expert and…

The latest volcanic eruption in Iceland has had a dramatic effect on many more millions of people than could have been imagined. As one person commented on Twitter this morning, interesting to see the hand of God can still command such control over us mere humans – or something like…

Sitting through a number of presentations from social media monitoring companies recently, I was struck by how these tools all look very similar. I am sure there is a significant difference in what goes on under the hood, specifically in the algorithms and search spiders that each have, but when…

Since the news broke that Bebo is in terminal decline, opinion formers have been asking: why did it fail? Some, like The Times, have pointed towards a lack of monetisation through advertising. If we hold up the Facebook smart advertising model as the best commercial blueprint, this…

Another Easter over and once again too much chocolate has been consumed in my household! Along with Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and other seasonal celebrations, Easter is a key time for brands to invest in their marketing activities. With an increasing number of social media, mobile and other digital…

Recently there has been a major shift in the world of Corporate Social Responsibility. Climate change and the current economic climate have pushed companies to adopt a more pro-active approach to CSR. The bottom line is now centred around people, planet and profit. As businesses aim to build more sustainable…

What? For the first time in a week, search demand for Gordon Brown has crept above David Cameron: Not since the 22nd March, when Gordon trumped Cameron’s baby with his super fast broadband and Institute of Web Science announcement has there been such a result for Labour…

It’s taken a while but the fashion industry has finally woken up to the wonders of the World Wide Web! Online stores such as ASOS are booming, fashion designers are tweeting like there’s no tomorrow and the majority of high-street retailers now have some form of blog…

Recent message exchanges with a major mobile phone company have made me think about the role Twitter plays in establishing, building and maintaining customer relationships. Such a short message by nature needs to be succinct and to the point, not something that the majority of big companies…

As I far as I was concerned, SXSW (South by Southwest, for those of you not familiar with the acronym) was a music event, a chance for A&Rs, managers and sundry other music industry…

Twitter‘s habit of falling foul to phishing attacks may have come to an end this week as the company announced that it’s stepping up its efforts to eliminate malicious attacks with some new features, described as being able…

You may have heard about the new US start-up that’s been making the headlines recently. Of course, it’s yet another social network. But this is a social network with a very different twist. Backed by a Twitter…

The British Library has recently launched the UK Web Archive, offering access to a huge range of web content that otherwise might have disappeared into a ‘digital black hole.’ Despite being plagued by legal issues currently hindering them from recording much more than 1% of the 8…

These two disciplines may seem like unlikely bedfellows, but bear with me, the analogy works out in the end. I was recently reading a book called Pixarpedia, a behind-the-scenes look at Disney Pixar’s film studio. Almost as soon…

Rumours, insinuations and accusations have been bubbling around for a while now, but today’s announcement that the European Commission has launched a preliminary anti-monopoly probe into Google’s affairs is the first concrete action to…

This week the Guardian online posted a blog on the rise of social media as a relevant source of information for journalists, as revealed by a recent US survey which claimed that 56% of reporters view it as an important tool for producing stories. The research carried…