Social media moves at quite a pace. This line is constantly reeled off over and over again, but it’s worth reiterating because it moves at such a pace it catches even the most savvy of generations off guard.

Social media started out as a fad for the kids. If you’re between the ages of 25-30 you’ll have started your social media career when you were a student. If you’re younger, you’ll have been involved far longer.

This post is about understanding your personal brand and how you, as a person, are becoming a touch point in business and how your social spaces are affecting decisions people make about you.

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By Peter Wood

Business-to-business social is a brilliant place to be at the moment. It’s generally not spammy (bar social media ninjas begging you to sign up to their webinars), it  can act as a fantastic reference point for future clients during the research phase of the buying cycle, and it can quickly turn into an excellent point of reference during the gestation period from first contact to the close of a sale.

So, if you’re serious about raising your brand awareness and extending your offline marketing message, have you thought about SlideShare? I hope so. SlideShare is the de facto document sharing site online. Thousands of people share their PDF’s, PowerPoint slides and videos every day.

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Pinterest has been going into hyper drive of late. Everyone is keen to extoll the virtues of the new social network. The hyperbole is quite unbelievable. It’s the new place to hang out, share pictures and project a lifestyle you’d like to have. I like it, it’s fun, but I can’t help but think there will come a point when the excitement will die down and you’ll realise that it’s just sharing pictures.

There are a few reasons why I think it might not turn into a Facebook type monster. They’re all conjecture and based on my own personal experience of the site, but I thought I’d share them anyway… 

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By Peter Wood

 In football, a preseason friendly is the chance to establish where you are with a playing squad, judge fitness levels and test out new formations. Last night’s Old Street encounter was no different. The added buzz to the occasion was the first ever Dentsu Network derby between the creative minds of Dentsu London and the Digital marketing specialists at STEAK.

STEAK lined up with a traditional 2-1-1 formation, offering protection to the keeper whilst trying to exploit the creative talents of Simon Wong in midfield. Dentsu, the more experienced of the teams played a more attacking formation and that paid off when they took the lead early on.

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By Peter Wood

Facebook have a habit of springing unpleasant surprises on people. Timeline rolled out recently for personal profiles and a mad dash ensued to ensure all past shame was removed as quickly as possible. Yesterday, it rolled out the time line for brand pages.

From a social marketing perspective there are a lot of great additions, but all the good is generally underpinned by a pretty major flaw in the whole update. [Read more →]

By Peter Wood, The Wall

So I’ve had this inkling for a while. It goes a little something like this…

What your friends like does not have a massive impact on your purchasing decisions

I know, I know… it’s a hugely outspoken thing to say. After all, Facebook have dictated to everyone in the marketing world that people are hugely influenced by what their friends eat, wear, listen to and watch. Sponsored stories; the advertising function Facebook advertisers use to tell people what their friends have liked, is supposed to be hugely powerful to anyone who wants to believe it.

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By Peter Wood

The STEAK Social team was invited to speak at the Enterprise Ireland Retailer Solutions CEO Forum at East Point in Dublin. Enterprise Ireland help promote the export of Irish business globally. STEAK have been charged with helping to establish Enterprise Ireland clients in the social space over the past 18 months.   

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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 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 →]