The rapid adoption of mobile and location aware smartphones has seen the dawn of location based applications. Whilst often based around gaming, these applications enable hyper-local marketing. Currently Foursquare appears to be the dominant application in this space, with brands such a Starbucks being quick to see the potential and get involved. Checkin-apps, as they are starting to be called, are likely to be incorporated into many social platforms and become a normal part of consumer behaviour. Facebook is already rolling out a checkin feature, and other smaller sites are likely to follow. The time is right to work out what geo-aware functionality could mean to your business. This post highlights some of the second tier players that you should be aware of.

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The humble blog, despite being mentioned frequently, it seems to remain often misunderstood. Yet this established vehicle provides clear and quantifiable value for Charities and Professional Services organizations, as well as many other B2B businesses.  In this article I try to address some of the main reasons your organization should invest time into this social channel (you did know it was a form of social media didn’t you?), as well as describing the common pitfalls to avoid. Whilst it would be possible to write a book about blogging for businesses, this article will point you in the write direction. Read the rest of this entry »

We seem to hear a lot about augmented reality these days. Perhaps not as much as 3d cinema or more recently the World Cup… but still quite a lot. What is all the fuss about and is anyone really doing anything interesting and valuable with augmented reality yet? Come to that what is augmented reality?

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Further to our last post discussing the problems that Twitter faces, some new research indicates that Twitter might be more irrelevant than even we suggested. Whilst the social media guru community keep telling you to ‘listen’ to the ‘conversation’ on Twitter you might find that you are listening to a much smaller and more niche segment than you realise. So what are the latest figures that continue to keep Twitter in intensive care?

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What on earth does Google think it will achieve? The saga of it reluctance to comply with Chinese law continues, and apparently Google seem unable to understand that in the landscape of world politics they are a totally irrelevant player. But actually maybe some good has come out of this. Read the rest of this entry »