For most, January is a slow, painful month; riddled with the guilt of broken resolutions, post-Christmas budget restrictions, cold weather and the prospect of a holiday seeming a million miles away…

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By Adrian Goodsell

I attended the first IAB Social Media Debate of 2012 yesterday afternoon. It was also the first since STEAK joined the IAB’s Social Media Council. The motion was as follows:

‘The online marketing industry is too easily distracted by the latest ‘shiny technical object’, reducing its effectiveness and ability to achieve results’  

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By Adrian Goodsell, The Wall, 30th January 2012

Looking for a huge numbers of fans? Can’t wait a second longer? Then read on, this blog post is for you…

1. Buy your fans
This is definitely the easiest way to guarantee a following fast; decide how many ‘fans’ you want then simply go to any dodgy-looking site (probably via a Facebook ad) take your wallet out (remember to stick your head in the sand) et voila, success! But wait a second; by definition once you directly pay for a relationship what does that relationship become? What does it really mean? There’s a very obvious analogy here, one that doesn’t involve any love at all…

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Our CEO, Ollie, is currently out in Tokyo, visiting the marvellous Dentsu HQ. Yesterday he spoke at the seminar on the importance of Social Media within a marketing strategy, with fellow agencies of the network – 360i, IgnitionOne, mcgarrybowen, AdJug and firstborn.

By Peter Wood, The Wall, 27th January 2012

What is influence? It’s a massive question in the world of social media. Thousands of man hours are being pumped into companies who are trying to solve the problem in the hope that one day, you’ll be able to search a category and an application will spit out exactly the 5 top influencers you need to be communicating with to push your product.
I’m in the lucky position whereby I could be classed as an ‘influencer’ in a field (not social, sadly!), so I can quickly decipher which tools work and which don’t. I’ve tried blog ranking systems, I’ve had a go on Klout and I’ve used bespoke services. The commonality between all of them? [Read more →]

By Peter Wood, The Wall, 26th January 2012

Social media has clunked its way through many evolutions over the years. The past four has seen the digital world settle into a social rhythm. Facebook being the daddy of them all, Twitter is the cooler, younger kid on the block, and LinkedIn taking the lead as the place to hang out to talk serious stuff. The commonality with all of those platforms is they are essentially for everyone. The barriers to entry are extremely low. Most tech savvy people will generally have those three, even if they’re not active in all three (I bet everyone who reads this has all three).

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By Duncan Parry, Search Engine Watch, 27th January 2012

After a year’s delay, Microsoft adCenter will start to power the PPC results on Yahoo UK in Q2 of 2012. Discussion of its potential for success aside, here are some useful links and an action plan for preparing UK campaigns.

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By Gareth Owen, Search Engine Watch, 18 January 2012

One area that search engines have made a number of significant advancements in recent years is in how they evaluate content on a website. So what does a perfectly optimised page look like in 2012? Let’s look at 10 elements.

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We are pleased to announce the expansion of its US operations with a new location in Santa Monica, CA. STEAK LA will be headed by Norman Brauns, a long-time employee of STEAK and a well-respected industry veteran. Brauns will continue to report into Mark Schwartz, STEAK’s US Managing Director.

Schwartz says, “As STEAK’s footprint grows worldwide, it has become apparent that the West Coast represents the largest opportunity for continued business expansion. Having a client-facing organisation in the Los Angeles area will allow us to offer our customers more flexibility and provides us with a direct sales channel in an incredibly strategic growth market.”

By Peter Wood, The Wall, January 13th 2012 

Facebook insights. Dear oh dear. I’ve got to come out and say it – I’ve found their new and “improved” suite of analytics entirely perplexing, lacking in usefulness and extremely complex to explain, aggregate and apply to the real world.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one in the industry who has been using the old Insights page to report back successes to clients. I’ve been living in hope that they’ll never switch it off , but the time has come – the old insights page is still an option, but it’s not recording new data. I haven’t felt this down since I said goodbye to my Bebo account…

What are my gripes about the new Insights page and why do they matter? [Read more →]