Facebook Timeline for Business Pages, no change on engagement after changing to it.

Would like to see how they do it but BBC News on Facebook can send you personalised news updates.

Finally some details on Twitter advertising.

Book from Dachis on Social Business. Out in May.

Triggering Twitter engagement. Four forms.

An inside look at how Google works on changes to their search engines. Quite a bland video but the change management procedures are interesting.

Mobile websites slightly gain on apps for phones.

Faster pageloads will make you more money. Why milliseconds matter for Amazon. I love the url on the story too.

Content creation online is very very important and there are hardly any good practitioners in Ireland for this. Lots of tips here.

SEO cheatsheet.

Book on social media failures. Yeah, dunno about an idea like this. Be nice to show good and bad.

Follow-up to the Katie Price and Snickers ad. Complaints about it were knocked down.

Changing your Facebook Page name. A proper process exists now.

Measuring Social Media Effectiveness.

Social Media Awards winner case studies.

Some things to look at:
Enterprise Ireland on their LinkedIn use.

Interesting idea. Clever in my view. Communicorp do an app for McDonald’s integrating their radio stations while helping to sell burgers. Integration, clever.

Boom. People spend more time on mobile apps than the web.

European Advertising Certificate. Interesting idea. Written exam though…

Doing SEO for Google Plus.

There is no Insight button.

Want to sponsor an Irish iPad game/story?

What a clever idea but I’m sure some will react badly to it. This is already happening without it being as obvious and blatant. Irish sports stars are encouraged/pushed to join Twitter so they can tweet about their sponsors/promotions. One wonders what guidelines are needed for this though.

Their agency was Doyle, Dane and Bernbach and their line was:
Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars. So why go with us? We try harder.

The first bit is obviously true. The second bit, perhaps over time it became so. What it does though is make people assume that someone that’s not first won’t be resting on their laurels but maybe the top brand would. We like to support the underdog.

Apple in the early 80s saw the giant threat that IBM was/others say it was conformity was the threat and created the iconic 1984 ad when they launched the Macintosh with the line:
On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.”

Apple were saying they are your tool to smash conformity. A good position. Ironic given their dislike of consumers customising their Apple gear.

I’ve been trying to find a link to it and failed but there was a t-shirt company who when they launched also started creating knock-off versions of their own gear and selling them at markets. The idea was that the fake versions tell people the brand must be big enough/famous enough that they’re now having their stuff faked. Their brand is now positioned with Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike etc. and that feeds in to the “real” brand obviously being on the same ladder as all these other brands. Clever yes, sneaky yes.

Unfortunately in Ireland there’s not a lot of clever positioning. It seems to be about copying someone else and laying in the same arse dent on the sofa as everyone rather than doing your own thing. Still, this means massive opportunities for anyone that wants to take on the status quo.

Do you have a QR code reader on your phone?

Yes 229 - 65%
No 93 - 27%
A what now? (Don’t know) 28 - 8%

What type of phone did they have?
iPhone (any type) 188 - 54%
Android based smartphone 114 - 33%
Nokia 26 - 7%
Windows Phone 6 - 2%
Blackberry 7 - 2%
Other 9 - 3%

Which platform likes QR codes more?
74.5% of Android owners had QR readers, 69.6% of iPhone owners had QR readers.

The results to me were surprising, the small marketing and tech industry drenched network would not represent the general masses but I still would not have thought the amount of people with QR code readers on their smartphones were so high.

Journalists and engaging in social media.

Sentiment Analysis is shite.

In the same breath, 11 ways to measure the value of social media.

Email marketing tips. Useful enough.

Social Media Art.

Companies have different criteria depending on the work they do. I’d be grateful for some feedback from PR and Marketing companies in particular as to what they want interns schooled in before they start the job.

Are things like the below important?

• How to create and run Facebook Pages
• How to run Facebook Ads
• How to create Facebook Tabs
• Running Twitter accounts
• Creation of content plans for Facebook and Twitter
• Running Google Ad campaigns

What other digital skills are needed?

Ages back on Twitter I remember seeing a teenager talk about the rarity that email was to him. Most of his communications online were around Facebook IM/Messaging. Mix that with various marketing research groups telling us what teens are interested in, without asking them and I thought it might be good to put a survey together. That’s where the Irish Teen Survey of Digital Trends came from.

Firstly, I compiled some ideas/questions I wanted answers for. Then I asked Eleanor, Aidan, Adam and Ian for some feedback on these. They suggested questions to ask, they laughed at some of the notions I had about teenagers and they listed options for some of the multi-choice questions. With that information I then collated the questions and employed someone to put them into some surveying software. I used Surveys.ie by SensorPro for this as I had also worked with them previous to this on surveys.

Next was propagating the survey. Once again I asked teens to send the survey to their friends. To get the survey completed, all those that did the survey were entered into a draw for an iTunes voucher and all those that got a friend to do the survey and their friend mentioned them, were also entered into another iTunes draw.

After the survey was done, results were collated and a summary and press release made. There was converage in the Irish Times, Silicon Republic, I was talking about it on Phantom1052 as well. Lots of coverage on Twitter too.

What does this survey do for Mulley Communications?

• Insight. Seeing what teenagers do online, how they consume content, what and why they pay for items will help the day to day work of the company. Presentations, training sessions and marketing plans will be better as a result.
• Traditional media coverage. While it’s people that are online and connected to me/the company gives us the business, the enforcement of the company being trustworthy to their bosses happens in the Irish Times, Radio 1, the Business Post etc.
• Practice. Being able to ask new questions and create mechanisms to get the answers is good for future projects
• Serendipity. You never know what new products for you or a client could be created from data you collate.

Costs:
Between the vouchers and the work to collate the survey, it cost about 500 euros.

Some lessons learned:
While 101 surveys were completed, there was a very large rate of those who never completed the surveys. Too many questions. Next time I might split the survey in two with maximum 20 questions, if even that. Also, have a few publications in mind for each survey, perhaps offer sections of the survey to each publication. Sample size is low too. Shorter surveys would almost double the numbers. Widen out the survey to rely less on people that receive this from friends on Facebook or Twitter.

This survey follows on from our Facebook eyetracking survey, Google eyetracking survey and iPhone survey.