The Sift Media blog...

As media partner to some of the biggest B2B trade shows we get lots of opportunity to meet our online readership face to face. Equally as important, we also get to catch up with other exhibitors, a large volume of whom are advertising clients of ours - and last week's Learning Technologies event was no different.  Speaking to marketing managers from a range of leading B2B brands it appears there are common themes for discussion, most of which seem to be around optimising online engagement.

We all know that your website is your shop window, and in most cases, provides that all important first impression. This is very much the case with many of our advertising clients whose campaign objectives are often to drive traffic to a particular landing page. Countless hours are devoted to user experience and intricate design details, but what about the copy?

It's an exciting start to the year here at Sift Media as we welcome lots of new staff members to the team. With more vacancies still to fill, we thought we'd take a look at the ethos and culture at Sift and why we believe it's such a great place to work!  The following blog was first published by our CEO Ben Heald back in August last year...

As we hurtle towards the end of the year and focus on plans for 2012, it seems natural to reflect on what has happened over the previous 12 months here at Sift Media. It’s certainly been a busy year, where we’ve not only focused on growing and engaging our existing communities, but we’ve also invested in new products, solutions and events – all of which will provide ever more exciting opportunities for our advertisers in the years ahead.

With so much happening in 2011 I’ve tried to pick a specific highlight for each month...

One of the common misconceptions about the role of Community Manager(CM) is that it is largely a “babysitting” position. A CM’s presence on a site typically realised as a combination of administrator, moderator and advocate. Balancing these three responsibilities can be tricky and there is often a perceived bias towards one area at the detriment of the others.

In addition to being digital experts Sift Media also delivered two different, but equally successful ‘real-life’ events last week: The Pitch Grand Final, where entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to experts; and AccountingWEB's Practice Excellence Awards, where firms are rewarded for great practice management and can benchmark performance against others.

Community managers are on the rise – and how. Recent research by EPiServer reported that 89% of businesses have either appointed or plan to appoint a community manager in the next 12 months.

15 years - It’s a long-time to be working in the digital sector, so haven’t we done well. Big back-slaps all round! I’ve been here for 10 of those 15 years and the media landscape has changed dramatically, we’re a long way from the days when I was selling pop-ups at £100CPM for the first time!

On Thursday 6 October Sift celebrated it’s 15th anniversary with a party for clients and long-standing friends and contacts at the very fine Goring Hotel in London.

The recent Social Media Marketing & Monitoring conferencet in London was yet another jam packed event full of new ideas, trends and case studies to take away and apply to our communities and client solutions here at Sift towers.

As always there was far too much for me to go through everything, there’s a full summary from event organiser and MD of our social times Luke Brynley Jones here .

Key highlights include: