To the amusement of many in online marketing this week, Sarah Palin has been caught out commenting and supporting her own posts and content on Facebook with a second, fake account. Needless to say, this is somewhat discrediting. Therefore, I write this post, partly for her so that she may learn and move on to greatness she is destined for. Ahem.

I attended the annual Search Engine Strategies meeting this week and was lucky enough to catch Liana “Li” Evans’ (@storyspinner)session Killer Facebook Marketing Tactics. She talked about how Facebook is not a search engine and rather a connectivity platform. She showed us an example of a search she did for a hotel called “The Mint”. For obvious reasons Facebook does not show the correct, or in this case; desired result.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week an online campaign to find a missing 14 year old girl, Serena Beakhurst, was happily successful in helping find her and bring her back to her parents. Classified by the police as a “runaway” rather than a missing person and initially ignored by the media, friends and relatives went online and quickly captured people’s attention on Twitter. A Facebook group was also started and quickly gained members.

Among the retweeters, followers and fans were several celebrities and other influential people with large numbers of their own followers. As such, the publicity grew quickly and the profile of the campaign heightened.

Read the rest of this entry »

So much of what is written about social media is aimed at or references a corporate/enterprise market. Often for small businesses it is very difficult to see how these tales of brand engagement and social media strategies really apply to them.

"Get off the bandwagon and put down the handbook"

So this post is an attempt to demystify social media a little by using as an example musicians and bands who talk directly to their fans through online platforms. Of course, not all of them do. Record companies handle a lot of it these days while many bands are virtually silent. I’m not talking about them. Instead, I’m taking the likes of The Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen, 50 Cent (yes, even 50 Cent) and older bands like The Levellers as examples; artists who are using differing techniques or platforms, to in some way engage with their fanbase via the internet.

Read the rest of this entry »