Chinwag Team's blog

A new study released by global interactive marketing provider, ExactTarget, found that nearly half of UK consumers interact with brands on Facebook and nearly a quarter of those are more likely to make a purchase from that brand.

Based on more than 1,404 consumer interviews and surveys, The Social Profile UK research report is the latest in ExactTarget’s Subscribers Fans and Followers research series to explore UK consumer behavior across email, Twitter and Facebook.

Press stories about social media could make you believe that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are just for spotty teens and young adults on the pull. It’s all parties gone wild when 5,000 turn up and cyber bullying. 

Update: Application form now available, see below.

Tech City is certainly making headlines at the moment, with groups of the area's entrepreneurs visiting Buckingham Palace (our invite must've got lost in the post) and a reciprocal visit by HRH Duke of York to open shiny new co-working space The Trampery.

The area will play host to The Entrepreneur's Festival (14-19 Nov 2011) a week-long series of events to help local and overseas entrepreneurs boost their businesses. The event is being organised by Tech City Investment Organisation, part of UK Trade & Investment's initiative to promote the area's digital companies and inward investment.

Around 2000 industry decision-makers, including potential investors and buyers from nearly 50 countries, will gather in one location for TechWorld, one of the UK’s largest technology shows at London ExCel Centre, 16 - 17 November 2011.

Just over a week ago, we (Neoco) were invited to speak at the Chinwag Insight: Facebook Marketing conference on 6th October 2011. We shared our predictions with delegates from around the country, explaining what Facebook’s latest and most radical changes to date (first announced at the f8 conference on 23rdSeptember) mean for marketers and business.

Other panelists that supported our talk included senior members from We Are Social, Wieden+Kennedy and 1000heads. Have look at some of the insight we shared at the conference looking at the opportunities and potential threats that face your brand when Facebook’s developments are rolled out to all users this month.

The impact of Facebook's announcements at f8 are still being digested, Mat Morrison, Head of Social Media at Starcom MediaVest and a speaker at Chinwag Insight: Facebook Marketing this week, takes a look at what these changes mean for brand adverisers.

Despite reaching half a billion Daily Active Users (DAU), Facebook's real value lies not simply in its reach, but in the depth of the data that it holds about that audience.

Much has been written about Facebook being driven by competition from other social networks, but it should be remembered that the real competition is not for users' time and attention, but for advertisers' budgets.

Using cloud computing to build your infrastructure, then this Q&A webcast taking place tomorrow at 2pm might be useful. Trevor Dearing, Head of Enterprise Marketing, EMEA, Juniper Networks will be on-hand to answer your questions.

After all the fun has stopped, what’s the value of it?

We all know social media is great – the real question is how can we really exploit this medium to maximum effect?  How can we extract the most value for our organisations with the minimum spend?

The debate about the best way for brands to engage, use and market with Facebook is raging as the social networks 700m strong userbase firmly places it on every marketer's radar. In this controversial guest blog by Mark Rogers of Market Sentinel, he investigates the numbers, the reality and gives brands 3 simple rules.

All this summer we have been looking at the effectiveness of Facebook for a variety of big brand customers. Here is what we have discovered, and for Facebook it doesn’t make pretty reading.

Chinwag's Sam Michel recently wrote about survey results claiming early adopters were growing weary of social media and when we spotted similar results in the recent wave of results from GlobalWebIndex from our friends at Trendstream, we asked for more detail.

And they didn't disappoint, here's a round-up of the five key trends from the 5th wave of their research. This analysis of key changes in behaviour is based on interviews with early 100,000 individuals in 27 key internet markets (full presentation is embedded below).

Social media influence and how to measure it, if that's even possible, is a red hot topic. A recent guest blog post from Simon Caine - I Hate Klout - kicked off a flurry of comments and twitter conversation - increasing his influence, perchance? Joanne Jacobs, one of those commenters kindly agreed to share her blog post and recent presentation on Influence & Marketing on Chinwag.

Last night I spoke at an event in London for marketing and PR practitioners on influence. I quite deliberately constructed a presentation which I knew would not be popular; I wanted to challenge marketing professionals on their focus on influencers as a mouthpiece for brands. Or perhaps more accurately, I wanted to tell them to stop what they were planning/doing and really think about why people are influencers to begin with.

UK Trade & Investment, the government agency responsible for helping firms develop their export potential and encourage foreign investment has announced a number of trade missions taking place this Autumn.

The six trips include five to the USA focused on cloud computing, app developers, 4G, mobile communications and digital media. An additional trip to China is planned to coincide with the UK/China Internet Forum with the delegation led by DCMS Minister Ed Vaizey.

This week sees the Startup Britain campaign takes to the streets of the UK on their Summer Bus Tour. Starting with Bristol on Monday, the bus will visit 14 cities up and down the country over the next fortnight.

The campaign team for StartUp Britain will travel on the bus, complete with experts, mentors, entrepreneurs and small business authors, to locations including Brighton, Cardiff, Cambridge, Birmingham, Sheffield and York.

The past weekend showed that many consumers these days have the expectation that if brands are on Facebook they’re offering customer service 24/7.

This is a Guest Blog by Frank Rose, Contributing Editor of Wired US, who's recently written and released "The Art of Immersion".

Everywhere I go this year, I seem to run into a branded content discussion.

From DIY Days in New York, to the “Brisk: Machete” panel I did with Robert Rodriguez and Dann Trejo at SXSW interactive, to the Branded Content Salon I spoke at at LBi London, to Morgan Spurlock’s POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold at Hot Docs and Sheffield, the idea that brands can commission entertainment instead of merely advertising in it keeps popping up.