Social Media Immediate Future

Social Media

In the past it was not uncommon for businesses to block access to social media sites from work machines in an attempt to curb frivolous use during office hours. Even in recent times social has been seen as a drain on employee productivity instead of the incredibly useful tool it…

I think I may be the only person getting excited about this, but in case you hadn’t heard, Periscope is now allowing users to doodle over their live streams. Officially it’s called “sketching” and is available to iOS users, after a pilot was launched just a month ago. The live…

Given my recent news that I am going to be a father my life has become a flurry of two things: work and baby stuff. This got me to thinking – aren’t they the same thing!? Well… no… not at all, that is ridiculous. However, I did manage…

At IF, we pride ourselves on evolving. Curiosity is one of our brand values, championed daily by our fabulous staff. Our event format has been well received for many years but it was time to evolve. After a few months of planning and tinkering, all was…

Social listening is all the rage when it comes to analysing consumer behavior, determining people’s views of a brand, service or product and comparing a company’s public reputation to its competitors. One of the challenges social listening faces however is the vast majority of social users the internet classifies as…

For many companies, blogging is a key part of their social media strategy. It’s an opportunity to build an audience, prove credibility, help customers and gain leads. Now, there are countless different types of posts that can be produced and published. If you’re looking for inspiration and planning future content,…

Chances are your social timeline is featuring a lot of commentary around new Facebook features. Some being available immediately others with defined development roadmap. But why the sudden flurry of comms. Well, for the unaware, Facebook has just closed their annual developer conference – F8. The annual gathering in San…

Firstly, it’s a bit of a stupid phrase really isn’t it – curiosity killed the cat. I’m sure some stupid cats have died but if we were curious enough to confront a moving car on a busy road then I am sure we would too… If you ain’t moving then…

In part one of our “Pro Tips for Powerful B2B Content” series, we looked at three ways to help you create B2B content that inspires action, outstrips the competition and wins business. In this, the final part of the series (for now), we will dive into three…

Getting your message across can be difficult in the digital age. People have very short attention spans and there is a lot of competition. Twitter allows 140 characters to get the job done, but data shows that tweets shorter than 100 characters get a 17% higher engagement rate. If a…

Last month (March) was the month of updates we saw Facebook announce massive changes to their paid advertising platform, Twitter actually change their paid platform and Instagram make massive changes to their algorithm. Snapchat was no exception and has released one of the most…

This week has seen Twitter get all Facebook-y (yes that is a word) whilst making some nice strides with their paid advertising engine. There are three significant changes that have all gone live this week; Universal code, new custom audiences and an ‘objective-based’ interface – making the platform simpler to…

In the last decade or so, social media has evolved into a data mining, user generated information goldmine, which is drawing ever more attention from those who can interpret the data and put it to good use. This is a…

So it’s happening. It was only a matter of time. Instagram is planning on using algorithms to organise content within timelines, as announced on their company blog this week. Following in the footsteps of their owners Facebook, who started to move away from a chronological display way…

Everywhere you go right now the digital marketing world is talking about ‘moments’… Google have their ‘micro-moments’ story, brands are high-jacking moments everywhere to meet their marketing objectives and reach relevant audiences, heck, Twitter even added a new section to the platform called moments – and let’s face it: if…

After Christmas, in a bid to get fit, I (like many thousands of others) bought the Joe Wicks book ‘Lean in 15’ and have been avidly testing out his healthy 15 minute recipes ever since! (I’ve even done the odd work out or two). But what interests me the most…

E-volution Working in an ever developing industry that requires a balanced knowledge of data management, strategy and creative flare is a never ending challenge. A wonderfully colourful challenge that demands any given media agent (of any typical agency that works with technology) to submit to a never ending practice of constant wit sharpening.

Our team had the pleasure of going to a seminar by Getty Images talking about the visual trends for 2016. The event took place at their new exhibition offices in London, and it was organized by the lovely folks at The Drum Network (shout-out…

How should we humanise our social presence? How should we show the people behind our brand? How should we display the softer side of our company? These are common questions from organisations who (quite rightly) invest much of their social media resource into gaining hard, tangible results. After the campaigns…

It struck me this week that social media is not really a new thing anymore. I know it sounds obvious. We have been doing it for 12 years. But this year it feels like social media got serious. Serious enough that it is…

As the minefields of social advertising get ever more complex and essentially a very far cry from simple tweet or post boosting we must move toward to putting audience first, defining your objectives and monitoring closely to optimising your targeting as you go. All very good practice, yes, but what other,…

From conferences to books and a plethora of blog posts, we are obsessed with targeting Millennials – especially through social media. But there is a hidden gem on social media. A demographic that at best is being ignored and at worst stereotyped. “Wake up to the social savvy seniors, or…

Recently Guinness launched a new advert but instead of the ad creating a perfect storm stemming from TV it was actually Instagram as the medium of choice. Guinness opted for the new 60 second ad placement in a bid to engage a younger audience, branded content has the most impact…

Many of you might be surprised to read that the seemingly infinite hoard of Facebook users click the iconic “like” button more than 6 billion times a day, driving the relentless social machine that is rapidly absorbing the Internet. This, however, was not enough for Facebook’s chief product officer Chris…

Bill has been a busy man, appearing on Facebook feeds up and down the country, leading by example with his behaviour and etiquette. His dedicated Facebook page has 1.5 million fans and counting. Now you may or may not want to “be like Bill” – his memes definitely split opinion.

Monday 1st February sees the launch of Shield 5. The UK’s first ever Instagram-only drama series. By no means the world’s first Instagram-only TV show, as US audiences have enjoyed several platform-dedicated shows in the past: Desert Friends Artistically Challenged…

I’m sure that many of you are well versed in brand building in the traditional sense, but when it comes to your own personal brand, how would you rate your online brand identity? These days, everything from landing a new job to scoring a hot date can result in an…

Sharing third party content is a major part of social media, as I’m sure you’re aware from the countless Buzzfeed lists of ‘things that only kids born in the 90s with Ninja Turtles as parents who watched Friends and grew up in a village will understand’ that appear on your…

Demographic data has always been key to any marketing or social strategy. After all, the most compelling campaigns were based on understanding what makes a target audience ‘tick’ – think of the Dove campaign for Real Beauty, the famous ALS Association’s Ice Bucket challenge…

Facebook is rapidly becoming the all-singing-all-dancing internet within the internet it has been aiming for for years. Here are a few functions Facebook products have that you might not know about: PAGES Pages is one product by Facebook that has…

Of all of the consumer tech and social media news coming out of #CES2016 last week, I wasn’t expecting news of a new Twitter ad product to be one of the most talked about. But with its ‘brand enthusiast gallery’ (purely a working title, I hope),…

It has only been 12 days and the first part of prediction 1 in our Blog 28 things guaranteed to happen in social in 2016 may soon become a reality. We predicted that a ‘Shiny new platform labelled the ‘next big thing’ will emerge’ and that ‘Digital professionals will…

When I was writing this I did think to myself ‘aren’t we all sick of talking about post-millennials?’ But upon a bit of pre-Xmas digging and realising that these tech-savvy go-getters were going to save Christmas by vowing to spend more than ever before and…

With the new year come new trends…yada yada yada yes. But there’s no denying, as we try to keep up with the cascading popularity of the annual Consumer Electronics Show or #CES2016, that there are some highlights of this year’s show that hold clear opportunities for the…

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through Vine House Not a keyboard was stirring, not even a mouse. IF stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St Howell soon would be there. The…

We have all been fans of Buffer for a while here at Immediate Future. For those that do not know, Buffer is a content curation and scheduling platform. It’s great for recommending content, posting, and seeing the success of this activity. It plugs in to pretty much…

As a community manager I get to see the back and front end of a lot of audience platforms. Seeing the content that resonates on a community feed and then ‘popping the hood’ to see how the content actually measures up against other posts and types of interactions. Simply gaining…

Everyone loves a list. Which is just as well considering it’s that time of year when people publish the most lists. Whether it’s lists of the best music or books from the year; lists of predictions for the coming year; or lists of Christmas gift ideas for your partner’s uncle’s…

We were very proud to win Best Use of Social Advertising at the recent Social Media Buzz Awards recently. Fist pump. We did so on a modest budget, pipping big agencies (Ketchum, Starcom, Havas, Manning Gottlieb OMD) and big brands (Starbucks, KFC, Phillips, Unilever, Heineken) with our work for Southbank…

I have been on Twitter and Facebook for almost 10 years now. Like most folk in social media; I am a social person. I love my social connections. I want to connect and be connected to (who doesn’t want to be liked?). The trouble is that I am now following…

LinkedIn has finally caught up. After several nudges into bits and pieces of newly-designed UI, including the Ads manager dashboard, LinkedIn Pulse, and messaging features, the platform has totally revamped its mobile app. Boasting a whole new breezy design, a faster home feed and several new features including a ‘more’ instant messaging system…

On the first day of Christmas, whilst the rest of us were getting excited about opening the first door of our advent calendars, powerhouse couple Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, announced the birth of their first child, Max. And if this wasn’t enough excitement for two of Silicon Valley’s highest…

When I joined the content team at IF just over a year ago, I came in with the mantra that creative writing made me a better copywriter, and copy writing made me a better creative writer. Despite the obvious differences between the two styles, I strongly believe that they complement…

As we near the end of 2015 I wanted to avoid a ‘social media trends for 2016’ style blog piece. Of course everyone will be eyes on for what is going to happen over the next 12 months, how the platforms will adapt and technology updates will take place. However,…

This is an open letter to brands and agencies (and a call for support from industry associations) to stop the neglect of those working in social media. This issue came to a head for me when last week I had a conversation with a young social media professional. She asked…

For all you word lovers, get your hankies at the ready. Or, if you’re an emoji devotee, then prepare to celebrate. Since partnering up with SwiftKey, a leading mobile technology business, the Oxford Dictionaries have announced that this familiar ‘face with…

Obviously the wave of attacks in Paris on Friday November 13th shocked and saddened the world, with the ensuing wave of social dedication on Twitter ranging from sympathies for the victims (#PrayForParis and #PortesOuvertes) to support for the actual attackers (#ParisBurns #باريس_تشتعل…

You may have read about Essena O’Neill, the teenage online ‘influencer’ who recently deleted her social media accounts due to pressure to maintain the perfect image. Although she had hundreds of thousands of followers and various companies contacting her to market their products, the time and energy it was taking…

One of the industry’s earliest and longest standing social data start-ups Brandwatch has raised $33 million series C funding last week, this after raising $22 million series B in 2014. There has been a great deal activity this year in the social intelligence space. Twitter revealed its preferred partner…

Social data is unstructured data. It needs a framework to corral the noise into making sense. Beyond the structuring of the numbers though, lies the real value in social data: The insights. Last week I found myself in a room full of data geeks (my idea of heaven) listening to…

Social Media may well be a key element in your company’s marketing mix but have you considered alternative uses for Social Media in the work place? It is entirely possible for Social Media to run much deeper than simply being another channel for your marketing communications. For example by reassessing…

Do you remember the days before Instagram and Snapchat, when Facebook and Twitter were just getting started, and when social networking felt new? Since the turn of the millennium, there have been many big players within the social media industry, with millions of users and aspirations to match. Some have…

Mission from ‘M’, just in. You must infiltrate popular social media networks with highly dynamic content, and engage your targets where possible, as the Spectre network makes a worldwide offensive. You’ll have ‘paid’ support from Q branch in the form of cutting edge channel technology and the…

Here at Immediate Future, it goes without saying that we an incredibly social bunch, but it recently struck me that we are a rather charitable lot of individuals too. This got me thinking – perhaps there is a correlation between these two qualities… Earlier in the year, myself and a…

Are you a fan of Hunted, the Channel 4 fugitive chasing reality tv show? It’s been great, hasn’t it? The mind games, the use of technology, and that thrill of the chase. What’s also been great has been their use of Twitter. The social media platform famed for hosting TV-related…

We all know the 50+ generation is hot on social. 2014 figures from Adweek showed that one in five Twitter users are over the age of fifty and 49% have a Facebook account. So how does one go about targeting this age group aside from age?…

The sixth annual Social Good Summit took place last month at 92nd Street Y, a world-class cultural centre in New York. The star-studded summit coincided with the UN General Assembly and the Sustainable Development Summit, in which world leaders adopted 17 new Global Goals.

Welcome to part two of our Q & A with two of the industry’s leading digital marketers: Alex Ayling, Head of BBC Worldwide Digital Studios and Nick Moxham, Head of Digital, Universal Music TV. In case you missed part one which focussed on Alex, you can view that here:…

Whether you are a budding blogger, a professional journalist, or just trying to ramp up your brand’s content portfolio, Facebook’s latest content offering could prove a useful app with which to familiarise yourself. For years, tabloid newspapers and radio stations have been citing celebrity comments prised from verified Twitter handles.

Attending the NATO experts’ forum on social media for international organisations, I was struck by how much public sector organisations are committed to communicating through social. So much so that they meet challenges, obstacles and the changing comms landscape, head on. Often working with limited resources, in an environment where…

London Fashion Week 2015 witnessed brands lighting up the digital world, from Burberry’s use of Snapchat, Hunter Original’s use of Periscope, and Topshop’s use of Pinterest. The digital world has introduced brands to a limitless audience. The use of Pinterest and Instagram in London Fashion Week enabled brands to show…

In recent weeks there have been a few big stories surrounding Emoji that represent the turning of the tide as more and more social platforms adopt them as the future. Firstly Twitter have sold the first of their new offering “Admoji” or custom Emoji, to Coca-Cola to promote their…

August is gone with the wind. With it go Notting Hill Festival, Reading 2015, V Fest, National Burger Day and summer. Relive the glory days of balmy summer evenings, sizzling barbeques and 30+ degree weather (sort of) by having a read through our top five IF blogs for August.

Apple’s recent announcement that it was going to be embracing ad blocking software has sparked some serious social debate and birth of the hashtag #adpocalypse. The move by Apple has brought into spotlight the morals and ethics behind the media industry and am sure will bring about another shift because…

Psst! Would you like to join a team of select brands – Old Spice, Pokemon and the BBC among others — who have led growth in a form of digital marketing gaining traction? The online gaming industry is rife with user-led content, with one of the biggest platforms making use…

What are your main objectives when your company attends an event? Leads? Awareness of new products and service? Positive brand interactions? Whatever your ultimate end goal is, more often than not, the marketing activities that I see, especially across digital and social, do not tie together with a clear ‘line-of-sight’…

Mark Zuckerberg will be hosting his 7th Town Hall Q&A session on Tuesday the 15th of September. This much anticipated event will provide the Facebook community, and a live audience at Facebook HQ, with yet another opportunity to quiz Zuckerberg on a range of (mostly) Facebook-related topics.

With Instagram Ads slowly rolling out to engagement-hungry marketers, and Twitter adding advanced coverage of all events as well as upping their game on Windows 10 and iPad Twitter apps – where does that leave the ever-dominant Facebook? With the recent announcement…

All too often driving attendance to events in the B2B world is an afterthought. Companies spend hundreds-of-thousands of ££’s on set-up, stands, design, product and offline marketing and organisation. Then, in the weeks running up to the event, they realise they have not placed enough focus on making their customers…

Over recent years, many football fans have felt disconnected from their football clubs, and largely due to the wealth gap, disconnected from players too. With the increasing popularity of social media amongst sports fans and the growing acceptance of its importance at executive level, here are some of the ways…

We call it ‘the power of a connected network’; uniting your workforce to harness the potential influence available on social. “Well that’s just social media tosh”, you might say. I assure you it is not. And here’s why: The most overlooked use of social is internal communications and it’s staggering.

You might have noticed twitter is full of ghosts. You might have asked ‘Why?’ or ‘Who am I going to call?’ well I can tell you, Snapchat is why. An ever growing number of users are utilising Snapcodes to migrate Twitter followers over to Snapchat and with…

Everyone has heard about the spectacular fails on social media. But this isn’t a post poking at those brands that make mistakes. This is about raising the bar on the quality of social communication. Which right now, isn’t always that great. Social media marketing is on pretty much every brand’s…

The social media industry is always exciting, with new social media sites popping up all over the World Wide Web offering different concepts and uses. Two of the most notable social media platforms that have grown exponentially in recent years have not been born on an American university campus nor…

The UK wedding industry is worth around £10 billion every year, with an average of around £36 thousand being spent on each wedding (W.I.F.E). It’s an industry which is steeped in tradition; from the importance of wearing something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue, through…

Governments, not always naturals for open government and publicity, are hoovering up opportunities to develop their cyber presence via social media. Perhaps in defiance of what we recently discussed in this blog on a retreat among UK investor relations professionals, both private sector boardrooms and governments are starting to…

Back in the pre-Kardashian era of 2002, HSBC ran a campaign called ‘the importance of local knowledge’ and it’s as relevant today as it was then. More specifically the importance of local dialect in relation to social media. This week Facebook released…

Social data is powerful. We should know, our performance-driven campaigns are based on extracting the right demographic, geographic and psychographic data from unstructured social conversations. It delivers results. Knowing your social data works. It works because we subscribe to the 10:90 rule by Avinash Kaushik who says…

As serious marketers we are all well versed on the benefits of social media and content marketing. In reality as marketers, we have always produced ‘content’ anyway, albeit now the channels and types of assets have changed. We moved from print to website, brochures to PDFs & micro sites, seminars…

Now, there’s a question! The issue of one of three giants buying Twitter has started gaining some serious traction over the last few weeks. Those giants are, of course, Apple, Facebook and Google. Although there is a viable case for Apple to buy the flagging social network, it seems that…

Many marketers focus on customer loyalty. However, they may be chasing an unachievable goal. Loyalty is an emotion, usually referred to in terms of personal relationships, friends and family. It is a human emotion and not something which can be passed on to a brand or product. If we were…

“Imagine for the first time in history, humanity firing on all cylinders, everyone, everywhere, new voices, new dreams and new inspirations” (Internet.org). With Facebook’s latest technological advancement in aerospace, we are now a step closer to achieving Mark Zuckerberg’s global vision. Specifically, a worldwide web that really…

The social media storm around Cecil the Lion is undeniable – with over 800k mentions of this name online and 444k uses of the hashtag #CecilTheLion. For those that don’t know the story goes something like this: Cecil is a famous lion from Zimbabwe that has been…

The oldest enemy of e-commerce has always been customer drop-off, losing potential customers during various points in your purchase funnel as they slip through the gaps in your carefully crafted user journey. It often left us feeling like Wile E. Coyote trying to catch Roadrunner. In-app commerce could be the…

On the 14th September 1987, the first email was sent from China to an international academic network. “Across the Great Wall,” the email proudly proclaimed, “we can reach every corner in the world.” Ironic, considering that the Chinese government has since blocked over 2,700 websites including Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,…

LinkedIn has just made a major change to the way brands can interact on the channel. They have just enabled company pages to respond as brand (as opposed to individual company members). Why is this significant you ask? Because it’s totally out of character for LinkedIn to…

Customer service – a bugbear of many consumers, and the source of much frustration. Social customer service has long been seen as the much-maligned poorer cousin of traditional channels (call centre and email). But has the tide started to turn? According to Dimension Data, 35% of all customer…

Facebook is as much an evolving ecosystem of data as ever before. We proactively share what we care about with people we care about at some of the most revealing levels of intimacy. It is no wonder that among such an environment of personal information, marketers can use this data…

With more than 100 million daily users, and 71% of those falling into the 18-34 age bracket, many brands chasing younger demographics are now looking towards Snapchat as a way to engage with and market to their customers. Other than fear of the unknown,…

The recent Facebook “townhall Q&A” session with CEO Mark Zuckerburg has left the internet buzzing about what the future holds for the world’s biggest social media network. The hour-long session saw Zuckerburg fielding questions from everyday Facebook users and famous personalities such as Stephen Hawking and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As busy professionals, I am sure that you often feel stretched for time to complete your ever-growing to-do list. As your inbox relentlessly piles up, have you ever uttered the words ‘there simply aren’t enough hours in the day’? Or if you are super busy, perhaps there aren’t enough minutes…

Recently there has been a lot of talk about Twitter’s supposedly secret upcoming feature, Project Lightning, and it’s easy to see why. What we do know is that it will curate and display events-based content in rich feeds which will be visible whether the user is logged into Twitter or…

Yup, you read that right. Don’t bother training your CEO, or for that matter, your leadership team, in social media. In our experience, training courses don’t make any tangible difference. Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating that business leaders shouldn’t be active in social. In fact, I’m suggesting…

Twitter has been getting a lot of column inches recently for all the wrong reasons. For starters, though it launched officially in 2006, the company has yet to turn a profit. In 2014 it reported a pre-tax loss of £372m, despite raking in £908m worth of revenue.

If you are a regular to the immediate future blog or follow us on Twitter then you will know that we were very much behind #SMWF last week. I was there, taking selfies, storming the stage, speaking on a panel but most importantly networking and talking to industry peers about…

What is the ‘best’ performing blog? Which piece of content performs the best on my website? What should we make more of? These are all questions I am used to hearing from clients. There are a number of ways to measure ‘success’ and ‘performance’ but before doing so you need…

Social Media is an incredibly fast paced and exciting industry in which new platforms, aps and blogs rapidly spring into the digital landscape. With social media facilitating innovative approaches to real time marketing, it has never been more important for marketers to keep their finger on the pulse of these continuous developments.

“We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the minds stays up all night, telling itself stories.” – Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal American author and journalist, Ernest Hemingway once made a $10 bet with some writer friends that he…

Video killed the erm, everything star. There is no question that video is the future of content marketing and by proxy social media or that by 2017 video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic worldwide. As video dominates marketing strategies left right and centre it can…