Archive: 2022

Yeah that’s right – especially to those of you working at one of hundreds of social media marketing tools and platforms – I forgot technology! Firstly, it isn’t a ‘p’ so then I would have had to change the title of my blog post. Secondly, I left it out…
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When news broke earlier this month that a former news executive on whose watch Britain’s phone hacking scandal occurred was joining the ranks of the social media universe, it raised a few eyebrows but also thrust attention on a nascent, high-risk but intriguing area: social media dictating the news.
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Your audience on social media can be a fickle, and tricky one to crack. But it’s a quest worth fighting for! Did you know an astonishing 47% of people who follow brands on social are more likely to visit the company’s website? Precisely why it’s…
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By adjusting your approach to social media during your businesses peak period, you could turn a stressful and potentially fearful time into a victorious experience delivering spadefuls of ROI. We’ve heard it before: “social can be your best friend or your worst enemy”. This is never truer than during…
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Occasionally we all need to brush up on our social etiquette, so immediate future have produced this useful infographic of some of the worst things a brand can do on social media. There are plenty of lists of what you should be doing on social media to further your…
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Whether you’re at the beginning of your journey working in digital or progressing a career, it seems to me that conventional paths to success are not all that common.  In fact, getting on in tech often comes from idiosyncratic and unorthodox approaches. This Sunday, I had the rare and…
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The big social media giants, mainly Twitter and Facebook, have been making quite some noise lately announcing constant functionality and advert changes in the last few months. If you need a refresher you can find out more from our previous blogs: Facebook’s Product Ads target specific products to…
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A potentially game-changing development from Facebook Ads means that any brand with multiple products to sell can now upload their entire catalogue into the platform, and the automated system will target specific products to those people most likely to buy them across the devices that they use most…
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Did anyone hear about Madonna’s fall last week? Well, yes I think the whole world did and they heard about it in the precise moment even if they weren’t watching the Brits. #BRITs2015 anyone? The power of social. By the time the newspapers had printed…
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How many social networks do you have a personal account on? Now think about how many you actually use on a regular basis – those two numbers will most likely be different, and from a personal perspective that is not necessarily a negative. Now ask yourself the same…
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According to InsideView, the majority (90%) of CEOs will not respond to cold calls or emails. This is of course a hard segment to reach as they deal with high-level challenges on a day-to-day basis leaving them little time to…
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Yahoo first coined the phrase social commerce back in November 2005. Since then, many platforms and brands have tried to harness the concept. As happens with innovation, some early efforts were unsuccessful. Things are wholly different now. At a time when retailers are fighting tooth and nail to gain…
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So Facebook has at last, after 4 years, got its patent to identify influencers and experts in a social network. And so influencer marketing comes back centre stage. I say it comes back, because when immediate future started 11 years ago, influencer marketing was a…
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Moving pictures. The phrase has been around for more than one hundred years but in 2015 they really are just that. Only the buzz name for them is cinemagraphs. And they are the next big thing in social media and marketing opportunities. Based on the humble GIF file, they…
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Some of the staff at Immediate Future are former journalists who have made a transition from traditional media to digital media and now to social media. Some try to forget they even used the humble manual typewriter with all that heavy industrial noise back in 1990. Seems a lifetime…
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  Fireworks illuminated the skies across Asia as millions celebrated the Year of the Sheep on Thursday. Wednesday night, Lunar New Year’s eve, was marked by loud booms as people set off firecrackers across china and families came together to enjoy the festivities. In China over 600 million people…
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Voice is a big thing for me this week, partly because I have a cold and appear to be losing mine, but mostly because so many brands on social, need one. There is just no excuse for posts and tweets that are vanilla, samey and predictable? After all,…
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Today I am going to show you how you can take your pre-made video content on your desktop computer and turn it into a Vine in 4 easy steps. Of course the real first step is producing some really top quality video content, but here’s some I…
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The fact that Facebook can pinpoint your exact position, geographically targeting ads if you are within a pre-defined proximity from a location is creepy right? Creepy it may be, but very useful for advertisers when used correctly. Yet, geo-targeting isn’t the only option when it comes to ensuring…
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It is very exciting to be at immediate future at the moment! Everyday we are having conversations with intelligent people at brands who are embarking on a digital transformation journey. Within the first few slides in our presentation documents we share a common immediate future belief “social is not the…
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They say technology is ruining personal relationships, with a study recently published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture reporting that 70 percent of its participants, “all of whom were married or cohabiting heterosexual women, said that smartphones were interfering with their relationships” (Tech Times…
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Most people, when they think of the 1960s, will probably recall the ‘swinging sixties’ or the relaxation of social taboos (clothing, music, drugs, sexuality, formalities and schooling). You may even bring to mind the conflict that raged in Vietnam, the Kennedy assassination or the Apollo 11 mission placing…
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People who spread racial hatred on social media could soon be issued with ‘Internet ASBOs’ under new proposals from a group of UK MPs. The proposals seek to ban users who persistently spread racial hatred online by extending existing legislation that prevents convicted sex offenders accessing the Internet,…
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A lot we think. I saw a quote last week in an article that was shared by @SaraFdezM that got me thinking – if social helped get Barack into the white house – when will it catch up in the UK elections?   As…
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Did you know that it was ‘National Voter Registration Day’ yesterday? In conjunction with the Electoral Commission, Facebook issued a series of little reminders to kick-start the countdown to the 2015 UK General Election. Some UK voters will have already seen the “Vote Now” or…
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Convenience has been at the fore-front of user experience in computing for at least the last 30 years and for the web, this emphasis on convenience has resulted in the proliferation of easy-to-use login services. After all, who wants to fill in…
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Brands are demanding results from social media. They want ROI. Quite rightly too. Social has matured and now investment is required for paid and organic (and the content to go with it all). Yet 52% of marketers say they still struggle to prove the worth of…
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As announced last month the British military have launched the 77th brigade, put in place to directly combat extremist propaganda and the digital plight of Jihadist recruitment and…
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Sometimes brands make mistakes. Sometimes they are huge, glaring, thousand foot high mistakes in neon pink and people usually have something to say about it on social media. In the ramp up to Super Bowl XLIX last night (the most social superbowl ever!) many brands released…
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Whether it’s more likes on Facebook, a higher number of retweets on Twitter or a handful of comments on LinkedIn; social engagement is good to see – a validation that your content is resonating with your audience and is worthwhile. More engagement then equals more eyeballs on your…
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Over the past few days, a number of announcements have come out of Twitter HQ about new features – both for users and marketers. The option to privately message more than one user at once has been a glaring omission from Twitter for years. But with the announcement…
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Even ostriches don’t bury their heads in sand; it’s a myth that probably originates from the birds defensive behaviour of lying low and pressing their long necks to the ground in an effort to be less visible. I’m no longer shocked by the volume of brands…
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What can we learn from the health and fitness industry when it comes to engaging customers? Every January marketers spend thousands of pounds on health and fitness campaigns, targeting Brits who are trying to shed their Christmas pounds and fulfil their New Year resolutions of being fitter and…
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Unless you have been living under a rock recently, I am sure you will be well aware of an increasing cyber security risk facing brands, organisations and public figures in today’s hyper connected world. The likes of Sony, for example, have been hounded with a series of attempted and…
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So I attended this Drum event just before Christmas which was all about how to run an agency and be a leader. Half of the session was led by Simon Hartley from Be World Class whose whole business mantra is focused on…
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Last week Facebook and LinkedIn announced their intention to focus on social enterprise. Facebook at work launched with small scale trials by invitation. It functions like Facebook, but allows for a separate login and the opportunity to keep work and personal separate. LinkedIn, already considered the…
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According to several news sources, including TechCrunch, Mark Zuckerberg is being touted as the Oprah of the millennial generation, as he follows in her footsteps in creating his very own online book club, “A Year of Books”. Zuckerberg invites members to read alongside him…
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Twitter is planning to expand its advertising offering by selling media within third-party apps and sites. This will allow the platform to be utilised to market to people that don’t currently use it but may see a tweet online in embedded streams or publisher apps. Examples of publishers…
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We use the LinkedIn paid platform for clients on a daily basis. Despite its rather dated layout and reasonably thin set of features (when compared with the big boys like Google and Facebook), there is no doubt, for me, that LinkedIn still very much has the…
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Research and software released this week suggests that computers can predict our personality traits with a higher accuracy rate than our friends, family or spouse. Should we be scared or excited by the prospect of computers using the data we share online to make informed…
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Social channels are constantly evolving and keeping up to date with the optimum way to use each one can be a big task, so immediate future have made this handy guide to optimising your social content to the channel of your choice. Statistics have shown that the…
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It was once open to an exclusive club of only the most respected and the most influential, with the likes of Richard Branson and Barack Obama being part of the elite. But now, LinkedIn has opened its gates to all. It was announced last week that the LinkedIn…
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Bing, the Microsoft owned, ever-growing search and data resource has returned its translation feature to Twitter-owned monitoring suite Tweetdeck. Originally introduced in July 2013 the service offered users a two click option to get quick and dirty translation of any none-native language…
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The UK Government’s new anti-smoking video has been dubbed as its most striking visual yet. If you have not yet seen it, the video shows a dad with his kids in the park, rolling up his cigarette. As he prepares his cigarette, the tobacco packet is filled with mucus…
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The world’s most popular mobile messaging service, WhatsApp which launched back in 2009 and has now reached over 700 million active monthly users across the globe. WhatsApp’s co-founder Jan Koum made the announcement on his Facebook page. The company was acquired by Facebook…
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As we move through social media maturity, with some organizations already focusing on optimizing activity and performance based models, the question is – when does social media just become part of everything else? And what is the future of the social media department or even team?…
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There are almost 10,000 vacancies for social media manager on Indeed right now and the numbers keep on growing. In fact there are even more jobs in social media, especially when you search for social analyst, content manager, editor and the many burgeoning job titles. There are university courses…
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At the back end of last year myself and a colleague delivered a social media training session to a customer service team – slightly different audience to the marketing bods that we are used to. And what was the purpose of the session? It’s actually something that we as…
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