Chic&Seek offers a service that is, if not unique, definitely best in class.

Tara Nash-King, founder of Chic&Seek, works with women of London to recycle their wardrobes. But we’re not talking recycling a polyester dress from H&M that’s been put on a hot wash one too many times and sagging a bit around the hem.

Chic&Seek sells pre-loved designerwear. The clothes, shoes and accessories in near-perfect condition, sold by Chic&Seek, are from the wardrobes of women who heavily invest in the premium fashion houses of Chanel, Chloé, Hermés, and Prada.

As a fashion retailer, Chic&Seek appeals to women who appreciate high-quality, timeless pieces from these premium fashion houses – especially since the highly sought after pieces that Chic&Seek sell are discounted.

Tara has appointed us to develop Chic&Seek’s digital marketing strategy and expand the brand’s social media presence over the next 12 months. Our objective is to build sales for Chic&Seek by recruiting new customers, increasing repeat purchase and encouraging word-of-mouth.

We aim to achieve this with a mix of social media engagement, tactical Facebook ad campaigns, SEO and online PR. As always, the focus will be on developing engaging content that will drive conversation across social media.

Tara benefits from living and working in Notting Hill, knows her products inside-out and has wisely invested in fashion-forward, strong product photography. These themes provide the ideal platform for us to strike up a dialogue across social media channels with fans of designer fashion and promote her products to those who will love them the most.

Tara also understands the value in offering impeccable and personal customer service. So one of our priorities is to ensure her social profiles become a natural extension of this, allowing her customers to get in touch in whatever way they prefer to.

The Fashion industry has flocked to social media, and particularly Twitter for its microblogging capabilities. Now, at their fingertips, industry professionals (not to mention their tired assistants) can tweet photos from the front row to share the magic of haute couture, and can offer an exclusive view from behind the scenes.

His Royal Shoeness, Christian Louboutin (@LouboutinWorld) has in excess of 250k followers, yet his tweets rarely deviate from the theme of “Complete the sentence: Today, my Loubis and I…”. The response is always phenomenal because his followers are passionate about fashion and love talking about it.

I will be the first to admit that I long for the day when I will purchase my very own pair of ‘Sky-High Loubi’ heels, so I can complete the sentence. With luck they will be sourced from an environmentally-responsible business like Chic&Seek!

So, from the wardrobes of London’s chicest women, why not join in the fabulous fun of conscience-easing shopping for redistributed fashion?

Chic&Seek on Twitter / Facebook / Blog

Extreme fishing show ‘River Monsters with Jeremy Wade’ balances entertainment with myth-busting factual content to offer a unique angle on the wildlife documentary format.

The show’s fast-paced approach combined with Jeremy’s angling experience gives it a broad appeal, whilst remaining credible with fishing fans. This unique formula has attracted an enthusiastic and evangelical online fan base which, until recently, has been solely cultivated by River Monsters’ US TV network – Animal Planet.

To tie-in with the January 2012 launch of Series 3 on ITV, Icon Films were keen to capitalise on existing online buzz around the show by launching a UK-focused social media presence that would also serve to support the PR campaign carried out by Spirit PR.

With lead times a challenge, we chose to focus solely on Twitter and (working alongside Spirit PR) launched the UK-specific profile @RiverMonstersUK. Twitter also offered an opportunity to interact with fans in real-time during each episode, spread positive word-of-mouth about the show while it was being broadcast and recruit new viewers for the following week.

As expected, UK buzz around the show grew week-on-week. By regularly identifying and connecting with people who were talking about River Monsters we quickly built a fan community on Twitter and maintained River Monsters-related conversation as the series rolled out.

By the end of the 8 week campaign we had organically built a network of over 2000 Followers, including existing fans, journalists, bloggers and ITV viewers new to the show.

To ensure we were offering something extra to fans (a reason to engage) we regularly interacted live on Twitter during the show. These live chats featured guest spots from the crew, additional insights supporting Jeremy’s commentary about each species and location, plus exclusive give-aways during key episodes.

We also seeded exclusive teaser video clips, generating a regular stream of re-tweets in the lead up to each new episode. PR activity was supported where-ever possible by connecting with bloggers and media, thanking them publicly for support and linking to their coverage.

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive with fans, media, fishing enthusiasts and bloggers alike pleased to see the show had an official presence on Twitter and pro-actively joining the conversation. The result was over 1000 direct @mentions and retweets across the campaign, with hundreds more fans using the #rivermonsters hashtag and talking indirectly about the show during each episode.

Icon Films now have an engaged, UK-specific community of River Monsters fans on Twitter that can be used as a spring-board to promote future series.

For River Monsters news – @RiverMonstersUK
For Icon Films news – @IconBristol

Note: React Adapt provides specialist social media support to Spirit PR for a range of their clients (including Icon Films), offering strategic advice, social media management and training.

Haynes will be a familiar brand with the motorists amongst you, especially if you fancy tinkering around under the bonnet from time-to-time. With 450+ owners workshop manual titles published over the last 50 years, Haynes has become synonymous with car & motorbike maintenance the world over.

But what you may not know is that Haynes have also published books on pretty much any hobby, interest or ‘How-to’ you could think of. Their ever-increasing range of enthusiast titles now cover Formula 1, MotoGP, Star Wars, Star Trek, Wallace & Gromit, musical instruments, locomotives, aviation, performance cars, classic cars, football history, maritime, health & fitness, camping, space exploration and even a baby manual for Dads amongst many, many other areas!

Social media is well-trodden territory for niche interest communities and with so much love for the brand already well documented online, launching a Haynes brand presence was only a matter of time. Working in partnership with Spirit PR, who provide ongoing publicity for Haynes, we launched the brand across Facebook and Twitter in November 2011 and continue to build their social media communities.

With such a wide range of interests being covered, the biggest challenge has been to effectively target and engage consumers with the content that is most relevant to them. This has been achieved, in part, through two distinct brand profiles – one promoting the owners workshop manuals specifically and the other promoting enthusiast releases (with a focus on Motoring & Motorsport). Both brand profiles have been supported on Facebook with tactical Facebook ad campaigns, which serve to target relevant interest groups with content they will enjoy the most.

The results so far have been positive, with roughly 3500 new fans connecting to the Facebook profiles within a month of launch and a combined 2000 Twitter Followers connecting with Haynes after 10 weeks (purely through Twitter outreach alone). Whilst HaynesBooks continues to generate engagement around topics such as F1 & MotoGP, HaynesManuals has now been established as a busy support channel for Haynes customers.

Petrolhead? Plane spotter? Trekkie? MotoGP nut? Star Wars geek? Come and join the conversation!

@HaynesBooks on Twitter
HaynesBooks on Facebook

@HaynesManuals on Twitter
HaynesManuals on Facebook

Note: React. Adapt. provides specialist social media support to Spirit PR for a range of their clients (including Haynes Publishing), offering strategic advice, social media management and training.

We’ve just heard news that new social networking site All2gethr has received a video message from someone calling himself ‘AlligatorKiller’ who claims to have kidnapped their Head of Communications.

All2gethr (and their slogan ‘Anything Goes’) has already earned a reputation for attracting dodgy (and downright sinister) behaviour from its users.  Having just recovered and re-launched following a police investigation, they now face new accusations that their practice of selling user data for profit breaks various data protection guidelines.

Its no surprise they have received fresh threats from begrudged members and anti-All2gethr protest groups. But this latest threat is, apparently, very real as they have now confirmed that one of their staff is missing.

Video challenge for users

The ‘AlligatorKiller‘ (who can actually be found on Twitter!) has stated he will issue a series of tasks for All2gethr members over the next few weeks. He has promised to release the hostage once a significant amount of users have completed these tasks. It looks like a profile-raising exercise on his part (or maybe he’s trying to say something about social network users?!).

On advice from the police (amazingly), All2gethr has decided to accept his demands and appeal for help from their members to retrieve the hostage.

Reward offered

As if to admit their shallow nature, All2gethr will be giving away an iPad2 to the person who completes all the tasks and uncovers Mr. Stone’s whereabouts. 30 participants will also be offered an All2gethr ‘merchandise pack’.

Here is the @AlligatorKiller video in all it’s disturbing glory:

There are more video tasks still to come, which will be posted via the All2gethr site and their Twitter profile – @All2gethr.

Apparently the story for new horror film Panic Button is actually based on All2gethr – so I’m wondering which came first, the film or the network?!

For over 17 years CD Pool has been providing DJs with the most in-demand tracks ahead of commercial release. With the digital music moving from strength to strength, they launched their digital DJ service in 2010 – and Sixpack was born.

The premise is a simple one, receive six of the best tracks from your chosen genre each week. Busy DJs can pay a monthly subscription of £9.95 a month to receive their weekly packs, taking the hard work out of their music buying.

Since July this year React. Adapt. has supported CD Pool in developing the Sixpack digital strategy and launching the brand online, with a focus on developing the Sixpack social network communities. The best is yet to come however, with planned competitions and promotions coming soon.

Digital DJs can check out the Sixpack website for more info on what they offer and, of course, connect via Twitter or Facebook (where you will also find a regular stream of DJ-related tit bits!)

Keep an eye out for more client announcements coming up

Until now brand pages were only available to a handful of big players (and high spenders!), but this week Foursquare announced the launch of their ‘self-service’ brand page feature – open to all.

Not to be confused with venue pages, brand pages offer businesses the chance to behave more like people (in the same way they can now do on Facebook), without being tied to a location.  Users who’ve been appointed as ‘manager’ of the brand page can choose to use Foursquare ‘as a page’. This means the brand can check-in to venues, follow other users (& brand pages) and most importantly leave tips. So brands on Foursquare now have the opportunity to leave hyper-relevant, highly-targeted content at locations for people to discover.

This new feature may not seem like a huge deal, but what it offers in essence is the scope for businesses to take part in a much more ‘human’ way on the network (i.e. joining in the fun rather than selling stuff!). For the general public it means yet another way to connect with their favourite brands (local or otherwise) and seek out value over & above the product or service that the brand is selling. Twitter has already provided a lot of evidence in the last couple of years that there is demand from consumers for this kind of casual, opt-in, two-way communication between business & customer.

Some of the ways brands are already experimenting with Foursquare…

MTV leaves tips on local clubs & events

New York Times & Tiffany both offer tips on the best NY eateries, plus information on famous landmarks

NASA leave tips all over the US, creating a stream of space-related venue information on their Page

We’ve decided to have a bit of fun with our very own React. Adapt. brand page.  We reckon social media tips at local venues might be a nice way to start things off – keep an eye out (or follow us) if you are Bristol-based

“But who uses Foursquare?” we hear you whisper.  Well, it’s more popular than you may think… (it’s a cool infographic, in case you were wondering)

p.s. If anyone would like a hand setting up their own Foursquare brand page, feel free to comment below and we’ll endeavour to answer your questions!

Things have been bubbling away nicely here at React. Adapt. HQ for a while now with loads of lovely new clients joining us on our merry adventure through social-media-land (more on that soon!).  So we decided it was time to take on brand new Content & Communities Manager – Hannah-Jane Taskis.

We could have done the standard formal announcement along with CV blah, blah, blah, but that’s a bit boring so we decided to leave it to our new recruit to decide the format of her introduction.

Being a fan of all things Twitter and loving a good natter, Hannah-Jane plumped for a Stephen Fry stylee Twitterview, which took place last week and was, as predicted, a much more entertaining way of announcing her arrival for all concerned!

For those of you who missed the live Twitterview – here it is in summary, links n’ all.  Expect to see more of Hannah-Jane’s musings on this very blog in the weeks and months to come.

.@HJFantaskis, welcome to @reactadapt! Tell us a bit about yourself (in 140 characters)

.@reactadapt Hello! I’m a graduate, moved to Bristol Jun ’10, tea-drinker, thinker, Tweeter, and #EthicalFashion clothes horse & advocate.

.@HJFantaskis …and what will you be doing here @reactadapt HQ?

Content & Communities Manager @reactadapt – looking after social profiles for our clients and thinking up lots of interesting things to say.

.@HJFantaskis Since joining Twitter, what’s been your favourite conjured hashtag?

.@reactadapt #CookingwithHJ! Tracking my disastrous cooking attempts via Twitter. Good for a LOL & what not to do next time…

What do you do @HJFantaskis, when you’re not @reactadapt being creative with social media?

.@reactadapt I work at @bishopstontrade, I bone up #SustainableFashion issues & amazing brands – and I stomp about in sky-scraper heels!

Fantastic, stomping is good (and so is #SustainableFashion) Time to show off @HJFantaskis what’s the best thing you’ve EVER done?

.@reactadapt My dissertation – went out on a limb & looked at fashion in ancient Rome. New way of thinking about old ideas > http://ow.ly/5CCY2

@HJFantaskis OK > List your 5 favourite things in your kitchen

.@reactadapt I LOVE my kitchen – my plants, bamboo chopping boards, Le Creuset saucepans & griddle, shell full of tea boxes and gin bottles!

Well @HJFantaskis you clearly enjoy your food. What is your favourite food?

.@reactadapt Cake. All cake. Any cake. I’ve even blogged about cake > http://ow.ly/5CDtY

Ah, yes, @HJFantaskis we like bloggers. Do you post often?

.@reactadapt I do! I’ve been guest-contributor for award-winning blogs & my own blog, writing about fashion, sustainability, cake & travel.

A little birdie tells me @HJFantaskis was in the Evening Post the other day – please tell us more…

.@reactadapt I was! Great to bring in so many stylish #SustainableFashion brands & also promote @bishopstontrade >http://twitpic.com/5lqnds

Your a local #sustainablefashion celeb! Ok next Q > hypothetically @HJFantaskis, what would you do if you were given £1m?

.@reactadapt Ooh – ensure my security & invest the rest into socially & environmentally responsible projects in the Amazon & Indonesia.

Very responsible of you To close @HJFantaskis, if you could combine any two animals to become a super hybrid animal, what would they be?

.@reactadapt BEST QUESTION EVER! A liger (that’s not cheating, right?) and a phoenix.

Brilliant answer @HJFantaskis

.@reactadapt Cheers! *stomps off in sky-scraper heels*

You can also find Hannah-Jane on LinkedIn

We’ve been on a bit of an adventure in the last few months saving children from burning buildings, foiling the dastardly plans of local criminals and generally doing good wherever we end up.

But we’ve found a place we’d like to call home here at Mariner House in Prince St (Bristol).  So we’d like to officially announce the new office and HQ for React. Adapt. to you all and offer a warm, cuddly welcome to our neighbours Stuff Advertising (@stuffbristol), Pretty Good Digital (@prettyg00d) and Blue Brand (@bbcreative).

View Larger Map

Feel free to pop in say hello & challenge us to a game of pool!

p.s. For those of you not old enough to remember the Littlest Hobo it was basically Lassie but mildly cooler

In his recent book ‘Delivering Happiness’, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh wrote about the moment in the early days of the business when he sat down with CFO Fred Lin and asked the question ’What do we want to be when we grow up’?

With an estimated 200 million now using Twitter and 65 million Tweets being sent per day some may argue that in the world of Social, Twitter is certainly no spring chicken. The heavy adoption amongst celebrities, politicians and the media has fast-tracked the network to stardom and engrained it in the global Zeitgeist.

But in business terms although Twitter has made some inroads in the US with the introduction revenue streams such as ‘Promoted Tweets’, it certainly has a way to go before it matches the behemoth that is Facebook on subscribers, ad revenue or turnover.

Will people accept ‘paid for’ Tweets?

The opportunity Twitter serves up for real-time mass conversation along with an open approach to the way people can develop their networks has given the platform massive appeal very quickly. But the character-limited, instant messaging format doesn’t naturally lend itself to sponsored content without inviting criticism.

Genuine and transparent interaction is one of the cornerstones of etiquette within the Twitter community so it remains to be seen whether advertising in the form of Sponsored Tweets will become an accepted norm or forever be perceived as an annoying dilution of the Twitter feed. After all, it’s one thing to be sitting opposite a billboard poster while eating your lunch, but quite another to then have a complete stranger park themselves next to you and chat about their latest 2-for-1 offer at Starbucks (whether you like coffee or not).

Advertising on Facebook on the other hand has not (yet) seemed to phase the average Facebook user despite heavy dependence on their data to service advertisers (possibly because it does, on the most part, lead to better targeting). But Facebook has been very proactive in developing its ad platform since the early days so users have always seen ads as an integral part of the network. The ads themselves also take the very familiar format of display units that use the real-estate of the page and don’t interfere too much with the overall experience (although this might change with the recent introduction of ‘sponsored stories’).

Twitter Brand Pages on their way?

No surprise, then, that Twitter has reportedly be considering the launch of Facebook-style ‘brand’ pages, as well as recently confirming the imminent opening of a new UK office to help develop sales from brands and businesses this side of the Atlantic.

The recent updates to Facebook features now allows Pages to behave more like personal Profiles, offering brands a much more ‘human’ and personal approach to Facebook engagement.  It’s probably no coincidence that this is one of the benefits of launching a brand profile on Twitter.

The format the new Twitter brand pages will take remains a mystery for now, but the introduction of a more comprehensive branded environment excites people like me because their obvious benefits are easily communicated to clients and provides much better scope for launching a consistent presence across both networks.

Let’s hope it’s a sign that Twitter is now ready to transform from moody adolescent to responsible adult.

There has been a long-running debate amongst many in the marketing world about the best way to harness the intrinsic value of Twitter conversation. I always argue that the value inherent in a spontaneous positive mention for your brand is pretty much priceless – but that’s because I’m a wishy-washy social media idealist.

None-the-less I work with businesses that, very understandably, require a much more defined return-on-investment than just a warm, happy glow in their hearts.  So I’m pleased that the clever people over at shrtn.co have come up with a very simple but fiendishly effective way for anyone to start making money from their tweets.

shrtn.co have used their long-standing relationships with affiliate services to create a link shortening tool that also allows the user to instantly generate affiliate links for a growing list of retail partners.  The basic principle is the same – pick a retailer and a product, generate the link and post it, then get a commission from any resulting sales.

Getting rid of the faff

Generally affiliate programmes are the remit of hardened sales bods because it’s a bit of a faff registering as a publisher, picking retailers & setting up affiliate links, not to mention all the different mediators you need to do it with.  The beauty of shrtn.co is it that the process isn’t prohibitively complex so anyone with a basic knowledge of link shortening can tap into the value of their influence.

Who does it benefit?

The thought of every Twitter user & their dog posting ‘buy this’ tweets may ring alarm bells.  But those who want to use Twitter in this way will do so regardless and their tweets will fall on deaf ears anyway (in the same way i’m-just-piping-in-random-reviews-to-a-wordpress-template-and-adding-buy-links.com does).  So taking a step back from the obvious – here are a few examples of the kind of people that shrtn.co could benefit:

1. The selfless blogger

There are thousands of enthusiastic young (& older) souls out in the blogging world who spend a lot of time providing people with insight, knowledge & general entertainment.  Most of these passionate, dedicated folk don’t get paid a penny for doing so and in fact are pretty keen to find a way to receive a bit of financial reward for their efforts.  shrtn.co is a great way for bloggers to generate revenue from their commentary and review of new products.  Yes of course this practice would need to go hand in hand with transparency, but it’s no different to buying something from the Guardian book club or nme.com really.  And anyway the revenue they generate may well just be enough to keep them in the business of providing us with all that lovely content.

2. The Charity fundraiser

shrtn.co are very keen to involve charities in their offering.  There’s already an option to donate your commission to a chosen charity, plus shrtn.co will throw in 20% of their commission as well.  Charities (or their agencies) could take this one step further by partnering with a retailer and tweeting affiliate links, so you are instantly donating money to the charity as well as buying the product.

3. Here’s an interesting one – the up-and-coming new band.

Music retailers take, by far, the largest share of revenue per sale despite the fact they are essentially now glorified warehouses (or databases).  What an excellent way for the musician to claim just a little bit more of the pie than the pennies they usually get paid for their beautiful creation. It would also rather poetically be a direct result of all the hard work they put in to building that loyal on-line fan base before evil Johnny Record-Label came along and slapped a contract on them.  (I used to be evil Johnny Record-Label by the way so don’t take this jibe too seriously please!).

So there you have it.  A very snazzy new service from the guys at shrtn.co – Happy Christmas to me! (and all of you lot)

Disclaimer – Sean @ shrtn.co is a friend of mine. But don’t worry, all I get for writing this post is a warm, happy glow in my heart