The Sift Media blog...

The Advertising Standards Association is currently drawing up rules that will address social media marketing, while Facebook has recently taken steps to ensure that marketers use the these channels appropriately. So what do we need to know from a regulatory standpoint – and what best practices should be adhered to?

Love it or hate it (or love to hate it), Twitter seems to be allowing news to travel faster online than ever before.  A case in point occurred just last week when ‘Twifficiency’ was launched – a service which claims to calculate your Twitter efficiency.

Interesting times at ‘The Times’. The debate amongst publishers rumbles on about ‘to pay’ or ‘not to pay’ for content, the value of journalism and the bastardisation of existing revenue models. There are two clear camps forming, with the Guardian and the Times each telling us why their approach is the future for publishers. I have to say my view aligns to the Guardian’s stance.

As I was putting the newspaper into my cat litter this weekend, the irony of the double-page budget special, with a George Osborne mug-shot starring back at me, wasn’t lost. Whilst many have said this is a fair budget, a budget for the long-term, a budget for recovery, I can’t help but think, it’s a budget that’s going to hurt... In what, for the publishing sector, has been a very tough 2 years, it suddenly looks set to be doubly difficult.

To get us all in the same place it’s important to clarify the words we use. In this context when we say ‘social media’ we actually mean ‘online social media’ – and yet when we say that we’re probably not including the most ubiquitous online social medium, email, in our thoughts, so perhaps what we really mean is ‘new online social media’. Then again many of us are currently not thinking of new iphone apps – preferring not to be early adopters.

Moving on from my previous blog looking at aligning brands with industry events such as the recent election, it seems the effects of the new coalition government are already being felt.  Reports are circulating that the new Efficiency and Reform group are to reduce COI advertising spend by £160 million and while flagship campaigns are likely to remain untouched the CO

It’s been a little while since our last blog, but every time I would commit pen to paper (finger to keyboard?) to discuss the election another piece of braking news would leak out and my comments would be rendered redundant.  Such is the beauty of the internet, and more specifically social media, which enables information to spread globally in the time it takes to post a tweet!  Which brings me neatly on to the phenomenal level of online engagement that takes place during events such as the UK election and the opportunities they present for brand reach and alignmen

Our recent posts have commented on the importance of engagement when communicating with a B2B audience while not forgetting the basics.
But what are the basics of a successful advertising campaign and do they still hold true as the digital world continues to evolve?
We think so.  Each of the following steps warrants a great deal more consideration than a short paragraph in a blog, but here’s our brief take on things...

My previous blog looked at engagement as a metric and it seems it may be a hot potato in the world of online advertising right now.  I read a couple of articles over Easter that particularly caught my attention...

There are plenty of gurus, experts and thought leaders, but nobody can profess to know everything when it comes to integrating Social Media with marketing, and nobody can be sure where it will take us in the future. They can however point you in the right direction, advise on effective practice as things currently stand and give case studies of past successes - which is certainly pretty valuable stuff to know!