Conveying your message creatively requires a completely different approach to writing for other marketing materials – at least, it does if you want to make an impact with your audience.

For this post, we’re going to use Twitter to illustrate, because it’s the most challenging platform in terms of creating great content; it’s noisy, busy, there’s a lot of competition for your target audience’s attention, and you only have 140 characters to play with.

So, how do you need to change your writing style?

Writing the Old Way

It’s so much easier to learn from specific examples, so we’re going to go very specific here to illustrate the difference between an “OK” tweet and a “great” one.

Let’s pretend we’re tweeting for a hypothetical software company. Our imaginary company is about to release a new version of its flagship product, and you’re going to tweet about it.

If you were following the “old” rules – the kind of writing required for a press release, or even an email to customers, the content would just announce the release:

or perhaps, shout about a few of the new features it includes:

There’s nothing wrong with these; they’re “OK”. A typical “OK” tweet for business keeps to the old rules; properly spelt and with correct grammar, and informal enough not to be wildly inappropriate for the Twitter environment. But, a “great” tweet does so much more.

A slam dunk Tweet

A “great” Tweet will be more engaging (in terms of grabbing the imagination of the reader and creating some resonance with them), do more for the reader’s perception of the company, and make better use of the opportunities Twitter offers. Here’s our take on it:

Obviously, the image is important, but we’ve just grabbed a stock one – your “real” image would show your developer team half-hidden behind pizza boxes, or a row of takeaway cups from a well-known coffee purveyor stretching away into infinity. You get the idea.

Good social media content

So what makes our last tweet better? A number of things, and these would be our “top tips” for making your social media content writing more creative:

1: Offer real Insight

The tweet gives a “behind the scenes” view of what’s really going on at Fabsoftware; the reader is getting a privileged insight. This is always more interesting than the official corporate line!

2: Humanise the organisation

One of the messages that the tweet very clearly conveys, is “real people work here”. Showing that, over time, is a great way to build affection and brand loyalty – and also perhaps more tolerance for the odd mistake…

3: Be  Entertaining

Playing to stereotypes about coders pulling fast-food fuelled allnighters – what’s not to like?!

4: Exploit Twitter’s unique capabilities

Including a quick snapshot image (even if it’s been, ahem, slightly staged) works well because of the sense of immediacy. And as we all know, a picture can be worth a thousand words…..

Change your thinking

Doing social media content well isn’t really about changing your writing style as such; it’s about thinking differently about how you present your organisation, and what you can share with the wider world. Get that part right and the writing will follow.

It’s another of those areas where there is some absolutely terrible advice doing the rounds (some of which we’ll share with you below) so an article here seemed to be called for!

Tweets and Facebook posts – back to basics

Hopefully, before you even think about tweeting or posting on your business Facebook page, you already have a strategy. You know who your likely audience are, and have figured out what you can offer them that they value. That means, you have an outline idea of the type of content you’re going to be sending out. If you haven’t done this, go back a stage and get your strategy sorted; it’s amazing how much else will then come into focus.

Like the answer to today’s question. You know what your value is to your Twitter and Facebook audience, so you should Tweet or post….when you have something interesting or relevant to say.

But won’t we lose followers?

Let’s explore this a bit further. I’ve been told, just this week, by the social media team in a large and prestigious organisation that they have to post constantly because

“we were told by a big Social Media company that we must tweet and post several times each day”

Unpacking that a bit further, it seemed that the “reason” was to do with not losing followers, and with gaining new ones.

Will somebody please think of the children users!

As with so many things in marketing and comms, if you’re able to put yourself into your audience’s shoes for a moment, the lack of logic behind this becomes pretty clear.

From the point of view of one of your Twitter followers or Facebook Likers, they have connected with you because they think that your content is going to enhance their Timeline in some way.

If, after a few days or weeks, they often see content coming into their timeline which is not interesting to them, what will their likely response be? They will unfollow you. It might take a while for the irritation to build, but sooner or later, they will depart your social media shores.

Now let’s look at the alternative. Someone connects with you on social media, and in the first couple of weeks they only see a couple of pieces of content from you in their timeline – but both of those are useful or funny or whatever.

Who on earth would think “ah, but two days have gone past and I heard nothing from that company, so dammit, it’s not good enough. I’m unfollowing them.” Nobody, that’s who.

Silence is golden

Basically, very few people will break their connection with you on social media because of what you don’t do – unless your account really does go completely dormant for a significant period. You get unfollowed because of what you DO do. Posting irrelevant, repetitive or just plain dull stuff repeatedly into their social media feed.

So in summary, never, never post or tweet for the sake of having posted or tweeted. The only exception to this is if you are actively pursuing a spam strategy of the “chuck enough mud and some will stick” variety, like the one suggested in the helpful article here. Nobody likes mud anyway, and you might not like what it sticks to, but as with all kinds of spam it must do something for someone or nobody would do it. However,  if you’re a reputable company, this is not a road you want to travel. In fact, “...to get noticed, you will need to tweet a lot more frequently” may be one of the worst pieces of social media advice we’ve ever seen – time to start a Hall of Fame, perhaps…

Um…..No.

In the last couple of months we’ve been particularly busy with social media training, as more and more organisations realise the value of developing in-house skills in this area. And I can confidently say, that even after years of putting together training materials, we have never delivered two sessions which are exactly alike.

In the last few weeks alone, we have developed social media courses for the marketing team on a large event for young people, an NHS training and conference provider, and an author looking to promote her most recently published novel. Each was genuinely unique in terms of the culture they work within, and therefore every aspect of their communications from the language used, to the behaviour of their target market online.

In each case, they came to us asking for “social media training” – but of course, social media is a very big place. Without help to identify where social media is relevant to their work, they could have spent a very long time on classroom or online courses without much benefit to the organisation at all.

Two contrasting examples

If you’re still not convinced, let’s look at a short case study for the Event team and the Author in a little more detail.

The first organisation needs to connect with young people aged 14-25 (the target audience for the event itself), but also exhibitors and sponsors. They have good in-house skills around using Facebook and Twitter, and a presence on LinkedIn, but need to build their audience more quickly in a limited time period.

Before we began developing their training, we reviewed their existing social media presence. We always do this, to gauge the level of reach and engagement the client already has, and ensure we’re not teaching them to suck social media eggs, as it were.

Based on our own experience of delivering campaigns and building audiences, we identified activities that would help them. That included tactics- online and offline – as well as functions within the social media sites themselves, and free third party software and apps.

Their training was then focused around the strategic thinking behind this, as well as introducing them to the new functions and software. We also looked at fine-tuning the match between the different audiences they need to reach, and the way they were currently using the different sites.

Finally, we gave them a detailed plan for maximising the impact of social media before, during and after the event.

The Author was a complete beginner with social media, but had been advised by her publisher that being active has a large impact on visibility and book sales.

With no personal experience of using the main sites, she needed to understand the fundamental principles of each, and the kind of activity which would appeal to her readers and get them talking. We also helped her get a “head start” on finding her online community with examples of great author Facebook pages, key Twitter hashtags and more.

Again from our agency experience, we showed her some niche sites and forums which would also make a difference.

Can social media training be standard?

So in both cases, the clients needed to find the right people to talk to, and the community where the action was – but in each case, the right people were different and to be found in different ways. Multiply that by *every* social media course we’ve developed, and to create a single, standardised course would either involve days spent in the classroom in order to cover everything, or a very narrow core course. And it’s those elements which are totally unique to a particular client that really deliver the killer value!

Training  individual organisations allows us to work much more consultatively, identifying for them which aspects of social media will be most important to their communications or sales strategy, and showing them exactly how to put those skills into practise. Those “all the same” off the shelf courses are great if you already know what you don’t know, and can choose the exact right one to meet that need. If you know you need to learn but aren’t sure what, this can be a really time consuming and expensive path.

For more on this subject, try our article on finding the best social media training for you.

Previously, the key benefits of blogging were keeping fresh content on your site, and providing informal insights into your organisation’s work and related topics. For most businesses, that was enough, and if they built a regular audience of readers who liked the “newsletter home” type of content, so much the better.

That approach though tended to lead to what I call a “whimsical” posting style.  So a typical article might involve giving a personal opinion or commentary on current affairs, often linked (with varying degrees of awkwardness) to the business’s products or services. That’s how you get articles like “Why cupcakes are like the Olympics” or “Have you made anyone’s day this week?“.

Now, there’s nothing terribly wrong with that; it does give some insight into the personality of the writer (and thus the organisation), and if readers are enjoying it, then the “fresh content” and “informal engagement” boxes are definitely ticked. But, to really make your blog deliver, you need to start thinking a lot more out of the box.

Shareability – that’s what you need

There are two things which have changed in the last year or so.

Firstly, Google’s algorithm has had a few changes, all of which favour genuine, original content which is being shared on social media. The days where crude keyword stuffed articles (think those About.com style posts which seem to have been written by robots),  and random bulk-bought links from websites which had nothing to do with your industry, pushed you up the search engine results ladder are rapidly disappearing over the horizon.

And of course, there’s a virtuous circle of more links > more traffic > more authority with Google > more visibility in SERPS.

Secondly, the rel=author markup has come along. This is designed to identify an individual as the author of a body of web-based content, even if that content is spread across a number of websites (for example, guest posting). If you’ve got your blog or website set up to use the markup, it further enhances the value of great content and helps that content to stand out in search results.

So, if you can take your articles to the next level and start creating content which your readers want to tell other people about, it will make a big difference to your website’s authority ranking – as well as enhancing your credibility with readers.

So, what should I be writing?

Think about the last few articles you personally have bookmarked or shared. What did they have in common? The chances are, they will be doing one of the following:

• First out with industry news
• Showing you how to do something
• Articulating something you’d not quite understood previously
• Providing a resource – the best free WordPress plugins, or top 10 beautifully designed websites in your sector.
• and so on

No matter which sector you’re in, there will be aspects of your own business which lend themselves to these kinds of articles – which will provide real value to others, and which they’ll want to share.

If you’re a printer, you could include a downloadable “cheat sheet” explaining key printing terms and options which your clients will need to understand to get the best from your work.

If you’re canning sardines, you might want to talk about sustainable fishing, but could also include a well-researched survey of the latest stats around global fish stocks.

If you’re helping people get to grips with social media, showing the thousands that get phished each day on Twitter what’s happened and how to fix it might send you hundreds of web hits each week (it does!).

So whether you’re writing about double glazing or ballet slippers, start thinking more widely about your topics. Think about what your target customers would get kudos from sharing with their peer group, and how you can make their lives easier. They, and Google, will thank you for it.

Social Media and self esteem

Firstly, the article argues that using Twitter and Facebook is harmful to your self esteem and general mental health. We’ve written before about the phenomenon of social media boasting, and would agree that it’s not good for anyone – the reader or, ultimately, the writer.

Does it have to be that way, though? Of course not. In fact, social media offers any number of ways to positively improve your self image – either as an individual or as an organisation. Making contact with like minds has got to be the big one, but the ability to share your own creations, whether that be a blog article or a photograph on Flickr, with an appreciative audience is also enormously enriching -  and  just about impossible to achieve without social media.

This really isn’t about the intrinsic nature of social media, it’s about personal choices and how you use it. If your online social group spend a lot of time boasting about their lucky career breaks or genius children (or your partner company’s Twitter feed is jammed solid with nothing but new client wins and awards), and you’re sensitive to that, then you don’t need to switch off – but you do need to find a new social group which brings you more interesting and positive interactions.

Fight Club

Social media is, apparently, “a hotbed of bad behavior“. Uh, yes.  Anyone pop out to the supermarket, or get on the Underground lately?! Not exactly bastions of good manners either, are they…and neither is most of the public world. One of the great things about Twitter is that the relative anonymity allows people to be unusually honest and forthright. And one of the worst things about Twitter is…yes, exactly.

Cyber-arguments with strangers aren’t always futile, though; we’ve seen instances of people actually changing their minds about any number of important issues, philosophical or not, following “discussions” on line – although the reference to Godwin’s Law is all too often relevant. Ultimately, a simple “never read YouTube comments or any part of the Daily Mail website” rule will take care of the worst of it.

Within reason, a good online debate can have all kinds of positive results. It makes you think harder about what you do and why you do it. It helps you articulate your thinking in the simplest possible terms, which can have enormous knock-on benefits next time you need to explain something to a client. Kicking  social media into touch and retreating to a little bubble where nobody challenges you isn’t, in the end, going to be beneficial.

Offline is no substitute for online

“Real world” opportunities pass us by while we’re preoccupied with social media, says Ms Henderson. The evidence for this – that only a fraction of  job hunters attend offline networking events etc, but 70-80% of job vacancies are never posted. So, the online job seekers are wasting their time on the job sites. That last part may be true, but it’s a non sequiteur anyway, as the major issue is that large proportion of “under the radar” vacancies.

Social media gives you a much greater social reach than the “real world” ever can – there are only so many business events you can go to, only to find that there’s nobody there even remotely connected to your sector. Being well connected on social media gives you a much greater chance of getting to hear about those unadvertised jobs or great contracts.

Like any other way of communicating, everyone has to take responsibility for their choices and the way they use social media. We refer you once again to the old “Twitter is just full of people talking about their lunch” argument: it’s all what you make of it!

Solihull Police’s Twitter account came to our attention earlier this week, as a result of some fun they were having with the snow-related shenanigans. They are doing a great job, and there are a whole bunch of lessons here that ALL organisations on Twitter can learn from – but especially those in the public sector, where the use of social media is far too often stilted, formal and dull.

Check out the account for yourselves, but in the mean time, here are our Big Four lessons for Twitter brilliance, as illustrated by Solihull Police.

1. Stop taking yourselves so seriously.

In fact, this could be lessons 1,2,3,4 and 5 as far as we’re concerned. As we’ve mentioned before, social media in general, and Twitter in particular, isn’t a place for po-faced corporatespeak.

Whatever it is that your organisation does, whether you’re Undertakers or brain surgeons, there is a lighter side ( or a darker, but still funnier, side, which is fine too).

It’s a fine line, of course, but mastering this one makes your Twitter feed 100% more engaging, immediately.

It also shows confidence in your organisation – you don’t feel the need to be defensive or stick to the party line. For example:

Well played with the retweet! I’m sure we’ve all seen the equivalent interaction where the slightly “off message” response would’ve just been ignored.

2. Join in with the community

Note: this does not mean making awkward comments about the X Factor.

Keep it to things which are relevant on some level – this might be thematically or geographically – in this case, the “snow crisis” which was affecting the local area at the time.

But again, humour is key:

3. Involve staff, and have a holistic approach to social media

Particularly in a larger organisation, if your social media efforts are confined to the office junior in the Communications team, it’s going to be difficult for them to give a real flavour of what you’re doing. Not impossible if they’re supported by a good flow of information from other departments, but difficult.

Some staff are more talented communicators than others, and if you can find those individuals and involve them in your social media strategy it will make all the difference.

Across the West Midlands region there’s a well developed network of staff at all levels who are contributing – from the Solihull Borough Police Commander’s personal Twitter account, to individual officers’ blogs, which are promoted through the main Twitter feeds:

This gives a much better insight into the different staff roles, opens up additional channels of communication, and is much more resonant for outsiders than a generic “press release” style corporate commentary. Do check out PC Stanley’s blogroll and other social media links for a glimpse of the level of activity going on here!

4. Understand Twitter and play to its strengths

It’s not all about fun, but our last example is perfect for demonstrating how serious and important that fun aspect can be.

Exhibit A:

There are two things which are notable about this. Firstly, whoever’s in charge of the @SolihullPolice feed has made the link between people frequently browsing Twitter to kill time while they’re on public transport, and the likelihood of the missing children being in transit somewhere. Then they’ve used that understanding to turn the public into the eyes of the police, by specifically addressing those people.

Secondly, without all of the “fun” stuff, the Twitter audience would simply not be big enough or engaged enough to have made that sighting happen. Twitter is amazing for mobilising a community, but first you have to build your community.

Again, that applies to all organisations; applying the same strict rules you’d use when approving a corporate brochure is likely to destroy any chance you have of harnessing the unique opportunities that Twitter offers.

Have you got any other examples of Twitter superstars in the public sector? Feel free to add them in the Comments if you do.

A blueprint for retailers?

First of all, a very nice, indepth analysis of how Walmart is using its key social media channels – Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and Google+. A more than usually thoughtful article, and definitely worth a read if you’re in retail, or just want some inspiration generally. Of particular interest is the way that Walmart have used the Facebook Milestones function to showcase the rapid spread of their stores. They’re also using it for some good “soft” messaging – emphasising their CSR and focus on sustainability.

The growth of the main Walmart brand page vs the smaller pages created for local stores is also intriguing. Depending on your viewpoint, it either gives weight to the “digital bumper sticker” argument – that many people Like brands on Facebook as a way of just giving them a Thumbs Up, rather than because they want to engage more closely with the brand – or proves that the kind of expertise and resources available to Head Office are necessary to make a success of Facebook. Without studying the individual store pages it’s hard to know, but an interesting study nonetheless.

This week’s changes at Facebook – Links and Graph Search

No, they never stop tweaking. This week, Facebook has announced that it is changing the way that it handles links in the News Feed, making them more prominent and with a lightbox view function on click.  Full details here.

But the big news was the new Graph search. Having called the world’s press together for an announcement, the media were a little overexcited to say the least, and the big reveal was initially met with disappointment from those who were hoping for a big departure such as a Facebook smartphone. That said, it didn’t take long for the “is the new Facebook search going to slay Google” type headlines to start appearing.

Graph Search is primarily a way of mining more information from within the Facebook database, and leveraging the preferences of those in your social network to “short cut” finding things you want. It can also be used as a full Web search engine, although this is based on Bing search capability so personally we’d be, well, surprised, if the results pose any kind of a threat to Google at least for now.

Whilst Graph search offers some fun possibilities, it does also depend rather heavily on the quality of the social network you’ve built in Facebook and how closely that network reflects your “real world” likes and dislikes in the present. For example, my network is heavily biased towards keeping a sneaky eye on those I went to school with – but that was in a very different time and place, and that particular group of people wouldn’t be my first port of call if I was looking for a restaurant in New York (that’s what Twitter is for, isn’t it!).

If you want to sign up for early trials of the Graph search function, you can do so here.

Trying too hard on Twitter?

Next up, a semi-serious article from Digiday suggesting some Twitter guidelines for execs who are the wrong side of 40. Some of them we’re not sure about (we love our emoticons and see that changing) but other guidelines make some good points – for example, we’d be very happy to see the back of  the old “Tweets are my own opinions” biography cliche, which has transplanted awkwardly from other media.

Website Revamp without the stress

A good proportion of clients coming to us for training do so because they’ve either just completed a website revamp, or are in the middle of it and want to launch their social media presence alongside the new site. We recognise these people by their short fuses and general resemblance to wrung out dishcloths. That’s an exaggeration, but it’s certainly true that the whole process is stressful for many and downright painful for a few.

HubSpot have just produced an excellent free template for tackling your website revamp in a structured way, which we’d definitely recommend to anyone about to start on a review project. Along with talking to us about web designers who can be trusted to do what they say, when they say…

And this week’s Giggle Prize goes to:

If you’re feeling a bit down after Christmas, have a look at our final link. From the makers of Awkward Family Photos comes the Christmas Edition…guaranteed to make you grateful that the whole thing is safely over with for another year.  And also give you a good selection of “what were they THINKING?!!” pics with your afternoon coffee.

The UK Social Media landscape for 2013

We’ve trawled through the publicly available data*  to give you the best that we can find on usage and demographics for all of the key platforms at the start of 2013.

UK Facebook Statistics 2013

The latest figures show Facebook accounts sitting at just under 33 million for the UK, around 3 million up on last year. Their overall rate of growth has slowed, but that’s only to be expected given the high levels of penetration they already have. Also, these numbers are presumably after Facebook’s considerable purge of duplicate and fake accounts which saw numbers fall towards the end of 2012.

The proportion of the UK population registered with Facebook has gone over the 50% mark for the first time, and now sits at just under 53% – that’s 62.49% of the online population. Interestingly, that is fractionally higher than the penetration for the US – so proportionally, more of the population is using Facebook in the UK than in the US.

The demographic mix has stayed fairly consistent from last year, with the largest groups represented being 25-34 year olds (26%), 18-24 year olds (23%) and 35-44 year olds (18%). The male / female split is bang on 50%, although of course we know that they use the site a little differently.

UK Twitter Statistics 2013

Up to date UK – specific stats were surprisingly hard to track down this year, very likely because many of the statistics were previously derived from Google’s Ad Planner, which helpfully removed all data for sites outside of their Adsense network half way through the year.

We know that the overall number of active Twitter accounts topped 200 million during December.This study suggests that just over 17% of Twitter users are in the UK, so that would give us a total figure of 34 million live accounts in the UK.  Even allowing for a certain amount of educated guesswork (because users don’t have to provide any personal information when they sign up, all Twitter data beyond the overall number of accounts is based on some kind of extrapolation), that’s still a big jump from last year’s figure of 26 million, and may be overestimating things a little.

Having said that, big events like the Olympics and the Jubilee, both of which saw heavy coverage and discussion on social media, may have been a driver in recruiting new users for 2013.

Because of the Ad Planner change, the most up to date information on demographics is now ageing, dating from August 2012. Assuming the mix hasn’t changed too much since then, we’re still seeing quite an even split between the main adult demographic groups – 25-34, 35-44 and 45-54 age groups each make up around 20% of the Twitter population.

The vast majority (81.1 and 74.1% respectively) of accounts have fewer than 50 followers, and follow fewer than 50 accounts themselves. This figure may be skewed by dormant accounts but if not, it suggests that many users are connecting with a small number of close friends initially; if curiosity starts to cut in as they get more familiar with Twitter, that could open up a lot of potential for engagement with organisations.

“Official” advertising continued to be rolled out to the UK, with around 300 advertisers using the Promoted Tweets function during 2012.

LinkedIn in the UK

The total number of LinkedIn users in the UK passed the 10 million mark during 2012, and is now approaching 11 million. This represents just under 18% of the population, and when you consider that LinkedIn is targeting a (relatively) niche market of professionals, means that LinkedIn really does own the professional social networking space for the UK.

It’s also a slightly older demographic, as you might expect; 79% of LinkedIn users are over 35, and it’s also the only main social media site where men outnumber women.

Best of the rest

Pinterest was the big noise during 2012, but most data on its users comes back to an infographic by Visual.ly produced quite early in the year. The main lesson from this was that while users were growing fast, the UK Pinterest population was a tiny fraction of that in the US. (200,000 vs 12 million). The data also showed some interesting hints about users’ financial status, with those in the UK apparently coming from much more affluent sections of society- 29% were in the highest income bracket.

Having said that, the picture is likely to have changed fast during the year as the user base grew, and until some fresh statistics are available for Pinterest it’s risky to draw too many conclusions.

The tentacles of Google Plus continue to spread across our online experience, with the new Authorship Markup and increased use of the +1 button making marketers take notice. (See our 2013 Social Media Trends article for more about this).

Whether or not G+ is anywhere near mainstream as a social network in conventional terms remains doubtful: Google themselves admit that of the 500 million + accounts they claim for G+globally  (encompassing everyone with a Google account, who could theoretically use G+ even if they don’t), only 135 million are actively posting on G+.

They’re surprisingly quiet on geographic and demographic breakdown, especially considering the volume of data that Google hold on users. All we know for sure is that the top Google+ pages in the UK belong to David Beckham, ColdPlay and Richard Branson – make of that what you will!

Instagram also captured the imagination of the UK public during 2012, and  speedy backtracking on parent company Facebook’s attempt to hijack ownership of all user photos may have been just in time to halt the user exodus in response. It’s currently ranked 6th amongst UK social media sites by visits, with 1.46% of all social media activity.

*Sources: We’ve used selected statistics from each of these sources, based on factors such as credibility and age of source data, and a “common sense” evaluation of what’s being stated!

Pingdom, SocialBakers, Beevolve,  Visual.ly, Google Blog, Hitwise

In 2013, crazed men in suits will stare in panic at social networks...

While we polish off the last mince pies of 2012, now is the time for a review of the changes we’ve seen over the last year and some predictions for the year ahead. We’ve seen a few of these articles already, and far too many of them were either very broad (“there’ll be more internet use”) with no explanation of how to respond to that in a marketing strategy, or full of jargon.

So with minor apologies for the length, here are our top trends, put  in simple terms to help you understand the implications for your marketing in 2013.

1) Mobile Rules

You’ll no doubt have seen at least a handful of articles talking about the growth of “mobile“, how you must have  “a mobile strategy” and so on, over the last few months. Many of our clients are confused by this, with one even having something vaguely akin to a roadshow in the back of their mind.

Basically, this means Smartphones. We recently saw Smart phone ownership go over the 50% mark,. More and more online activities, reading and participation, are being done on the move, using iphones and other smartphones. This is only going to increase with the introduction of more devices on the scale between Smartphone and I-pad – the new 7″ mini tablets, for example, and the new 4G data network.

So in 2013 that means…

Well, it’s a (possible) challenge, and an opportunity. The challenge comes from the smaller screen, which has a couple of implications. Websites which are mobile ready – by which we mean actually detect that they’re being read on a mobile device and reformat themselves to make life easier for the reader, not just “yes it’s visible on an iphone” – are likely to get more eyeball time. That’s on our “To Do” list for early in the year, and we’re giving ourselves a slap on the wrist for not having got it done so far!

Also, consider the reduced screen size when posting to social media – very long Facebook updates, for example, or badly formatted images, may be annoying to someone on the move and get passed over.

The opportunities are much bigger than the challenge, though. Firstly, more people on mobile devices means overall online time will continue to increase, as those bits of time when we used to relax (remember that?!) on the bus, or while the bath is running, get taken over by a quick check of Twitter. That means the potential social media audience grows, too.

More importantly, there are rich pickings out there for marketers who start to think smart with mobile, and capitalise on their customers’ permanent connection to the web. As a simple example, putting a QR code onto point of sale posters to connect queueing customers to your Facebook page and release a coupon code if they Like you. There are so many ways in which bringing the online and physical environments closer can help you connect with your customers.

2) Visualise Everything

Perhaps partly as a response to the ever-increasing demands on our attention span, plus more beautiful screens (retina-display macbook, anyone?!) than ever before, visual-only media will become even more popular. Instagram, Twitter’s new image filter function, and the growth of Pinterest will continue. Pictures really are replacing a thousand words, and even in the B2B space, 2012 was the Year of the Infographic.

So in 2013 that means…

We’ll all be looking for creative ways to communicate visually. The quality of images for those organisations with a visual product (retailers to art galleries and beyond) will keep improving, if they’re smart – it should be a good year for photographers! Those businesses without a natural affinity to this media will have to keep looking for their angle (no more Keep Calm posters though, PLEASE), so start thinking now about how you can help customers through clever infographics or images.

This kind of content is also more demanding, in some ways, than text; particularly when you take something like Instagram. If your employees are broadcasting images, it’s both more intrusive and less nuanced than text – we’d have a side bet here on there being a visually-led PR disaster in the not too distant future, too.

3) SEO is dead

Yes, we’re being (slightly) provocative and overstating the case. BUT. Old-school Search Engine Optimisation, which tends to be associated with optimising for reading by computers in a quite mechanical way, is increasingly being sidelined by changes to the Google  algorithm.

Keeping a tidy house on your webpages (proper title tags etc) is still a no brainer, but that kind of optimisation and / or bulk, meaningless link building is increasingly failing to cut the Google Page 1 mustard.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a more appropriate term now, and the discipline is much more a combination of creative content with technical knowhow.  The details behind this are too long to go into here, but there’s a great article here (thanks to @rwwebdesign for the spot) giving the basics.

So in 2013 that means…

More than ever, content is king. Outstanding content which either helps or entertains, will naturally attract an online buzz and be referenced (linked to) by other websites. Our current favourite example of this is Evans Halshaw’s Bond Car evolution. They could’ve just written some keyword stuffed blog posts about their new models. But they didn’t. They created a fantastic, timely piece of content (with the Skyfall release) which pretty much every petrol head on the planet wanted to talk about, and every car related website wanted to mention. Yes, that’s a big budget option – but it’s the principle you need to think about.

4) The bar is rising

We think 2013 will be the year when many organisations up their game on social media. By which we mean, start to think deeply about what they have to offer their customers on the social channels (hat tip to the rise of customer service accounts on Twitter here).

So in 2013 that means….

You need to too. Start thinking about integrating social media properly into your business processes, to see where it can solve problems for both you and your customers. Look at your internal culture, and whether it’s good enough to be exposed to social media. Get some proper training

5) Google + will expand its influence….and nobody will notice

Well, the general public probably won’t. We still don’t really have a term for G+ which describes it properly. It isn’t primarily a social network, although it looks a bit like one on the surface. Most of the real power is going on underneath through its influence on social signals in search, and as a hub for all the other Google products you’re using. So while the majority of consumers will probably say “no” if asked whether they use G+ as one of their key social networks, they may well be interacting with it regularly.

So in 2013 that means…

Honestly, nobody entirely knows, yet. There are some pieces which every organisation should strongly consider putting in place, like the rel=author markup, which needs to be linked back to a Google+ profile. There is some evidence that publishing content uniquely to G+ has an impact on search, so getting your G+ profile and organisation page ready and optimised, and perhaps experimenting with what you publish there, seems sensible. But most of all, keep watching the G+ space.

Happy New Year!

A bit of a long post for us, but hopefully you found it interesting. So finally, we wish all our readers a happy, healthy and prosperous 2013.

They do a great job of bringing together the most wince-inducing examples of Facebook marketing, proving the old adage that the road to corporate embarrassment is paved with a desperate need for Likes.*

Painful though they may be, most of the posts highlighted are just extreme forms of techniques that many businesses use, to some extent, and some definite themes emerge over time.

So just for you, here is our roundup of the top five Facebook  Cheap Trick techniques.

*you’ve not heard that one? Yeah, it’s old as the hills. Honest.

1: The Lowest Common Denominator

This is the Facebook equivalent of those ridiculous phone “quizzes” at the end of TV shows. You know the ones, those with the oh-so-tricky questions to ensure that nobody in possession of a phone is ruled out from picking it up. The “What’s the capital of England, is it A)California, B) London, C) Fish” variety.

Only on Facebook, we have the space to be more creative, and that’s how we end up with posts like this:

Ooooh Walkers, we don’t know. It’s a toughie.

2: The Awkward Piggyback

Desperate for engagement, any engagement, the poor Facebook admin jumps on any subject which they know will get people talking. No matter how irrelevant it is to their brand. The usual example of this involves neatly-scheduled Saturday evening questions about the X Factor.

Sometimes, they get away with it, and sometimes the post falls foul of the slippery slope from irrelevant to actively inappropriate. Controversial current affairs are particularly dangerous territory here – of which more later.

3: The False Dichotomy

This is a concept that we first saw coming out of the US, where unsavoury characters were using it to scare kids into the equivalent of the old email chain letter forward. A scary horror-movie style grisly ghoul image with text along the lines of “share if you’re scared, like if you’re very scared – do nothing and she’s under your bed“. You have two, and only two, choices – you can Like, or you can Share.

Never let it be said that marketers don’t spot the zeitgeist…..

(with bonus points for the use of kittens, obviously). LIKE or COMMENT or SHARE but for the love of God, doing nothing is not an option!

4: Stating the bleedin’ obvious

A variation on the above, where the longsuffering audience is asked to click Like in response to something that pretty much everyone on the planet would agree with.

The go-to here is “Click Like if you’re happy it’s Friday“, but we’ve also seen “Click Like if you believe we should stop killing {insert endangered species here}”.

It’s only a matter of time until “Click Like if you’re a fan of breathing!” comes along.

5: The Current Affairs Hijack

As mentioned above, this is seriously, seriously dangerous territory. It’s a post about that thing that’s dominating the news right now. Yes, it’s topical. Yes, everyone’s talking about it. But unless you have something genuinely witty or insightful to add, maybe just count to ten before hitting that Post button.

Shoehorning (pun intended) your own brand into the mix is particularly risky, as illustrated by the gem below in response to the recent school shooting in the US:

Ouch. Seriously, guys??!

What do we learn from this?

Here’s the thing, though – despite the (hilarious) snarkfest over on CCBP, the numbers on these posts speak for themselves. Often, that brand’s Facebook audience (or at least, some part of it) love that stuff. No matter how banal, ridiculous or even borderline offensive some of these tricks may seem, thousands of customers will happily chat back or click the Like button just as they’ve been told to.

And everytime a punter clicks like, that activity feed tells all their friends, and on we go. This stuff works – for now, and for a certain demographic.

And for all Facebook marketers, there are useful lessons here about the psychology of engagement. Don’t demand too much thought or effort of your audience. Talk about stuff they’re interested in, even if you’re not. Be playful. There are ways that most of the cheap tricks above can be refined into valuable party pieces, if you give them enough thought.