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Can IMShopping bring a little bit of the in-store shopping experience online?

As much as I love buying things online, there's a lot to like about the in-store shopping experience. Being able to see, touch and try a product in person can play a major role in a purchasing decision. It also helps to have a member of the sales staff handy to answer questions.

But a startup that launched today is hoping to make the online shopping experience a little bit more like the offline one.

by Patricio Robles 29 April 2009 16:47pm 2 comments

What's it take to be a social media expert? Not much, apparently

What is a 'social media expert'? What qualifications does one reasonably need before being paid to assist businesses with social media campaigns?

Despite the fact that there are plenty of self-proclaimed 'social media experts' out there, these are two questions for which we don't have good answers.

by Patricio Robles 28 April 2009 12:05pm 14 comments

Search market report finds growing focus on social media

Econsultancy's third annual UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report was released last week; it profiles the UK search marketing environment, and covers paid search, SEO and social media.

One of the trends uncovered by the report, produced in association with Guava, is that social media is becoming a bigger part of the marketing mix, with 91% of search agencies already offering, or else planning to offer, advice and services to clients on how to make the most of social media.

by Graham Charlton 28 April 2009 10:13am 2 comments

Could Vine be Microsoft's first real social media hit?

Here's an obvious but sometimes forgotten social media factoid: the most successful services of the past several years have been created by upstarts.

Microsoft, Yahoo and even Google? They haven't had much luck building a homegrown success. The big names in social media, from Facebook to Twitter and MySpace to YouTube, were all created by little guys.

by Patricio Robles 28 April 2009 09:15am 2 comments

Would you pay for a Facebook vanity URL?

As Facebook's unbelievable growth continues unabated, the company is increasingly finding itself scrutinized by critics who are asking a simple question: 'where's the money'?

Even though Facebook is generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, its costs are growing rapidly and there are various unsubstantiated rumors that the company is on a potentially disastrous financial path.

by Patricio Robles 23 April 2009 12:04pm 4 comments

Two sites for protecting your brand's usernames

It used to be that you do a decent job of protecting your brand by registering the domain names that incorporate your brand name.

Not anymore. Thanks to social networking sites and other online communities, consumers are increasingly interacting on third party services that have become targets for brand hijackers, impostors and opportunists. Their MO: snap up usernames that are related to major brands (and prominent individuals).

by Patricio Robles 21 April 2009 14:35pm 2 comments

The power of social media for customer service

We've written about the potential of using social media for customer service, or at least monitoring and responding to customers' comments and complaints, and here is a great example of how valuable this can be.

Naked Wines, which launched last December, was very quick to get involved in social media; it has a Twitter account as well as a Facebook group, and this example shows the value of monitoring and responding to customers' concerns where they are talking about you.

by Graham Charlton 21 April 2009 11:44am 14 comments

Confessions of a corporate tweeter

There are lots of articles about how brands should use Twitter. They all give good sound advice to the budding corporate tweeter: listen before you dive in, have something relevant to say, or learn from cases like Motrin or Skittles.

This is all very generic though, so let me try to give you my random insights and observations as @guy1067, a corporate tweeter for Carphone Warehouse.

by Guy Stephens 17 April 2009 09:45am 6 comments

Is Dominos' YouTube response enough?

After the damage inflicted on its reputation by the YouTube video of its employees' unsavoury conduct, Dominos President Patrick Doyle has responded with a video of his own in an attempt to reassure its customers.

In the YouTube video, Doyle assures us that the employees have been sacked and it will do all it can to avoid a repeat of the incident, but is this enough to recover from the damage that has been done to the brand?

by Graham Charlton 16 April 2009 14:03pm 4 comments

Want to know how many retweets you are getting?

Keeping an eye on mentions of your brand / company on Twitter is important, and pretty easy to do, with the range of Twitter search tools available, but one measure of your success on the site is the number of retweets you are getting.

I've just come across a useful tool (though it has been around for a few months) that allows you to see how many retweets you are getting on Twitter, as well as tracking the most popular Twitter users.

Developed by Mike Sheetal of UltraSuperNew, Retweetist tracks and ranks Retweets; I've been trying it out...

by Graham Charlton 16 April 2009 11:00am 1 comment