Steve Richards

Digital marketing background, having co-founded Swordfish in 1998.

MD of social media agency, Yomego since 2008. Launched the Social Media Reputation (SMR) service which provides data combined with actionable insight tailored to clients' marketing strategies and KPIs. The 'SMR score' benchmark is a popularity index which ranks brands alongside their competitors.

Why you need a social media strategy, not a Facebook strategy

The first venture into social media for many companies, whether a small start up or a big brand, is to create a Facebook page to 'experiment' with social media, which is seen as an add on to other marketing activities.

But just putting a page up onto Facebook, with no coherent social media strategy, is unlikely to do anything for a brand.

by Steve Richards 10 August 2010 09:37am 29 comments

Increasing the impact of an ad campaign using social media

In this post I'm looking at the world of real multichannel advertising, and how brands can extend the impact of a TV advertising campaign well beyond its airtime.

Earlier this month (May 2010), Bain & Company and the IAB concluded the final part of its year-long study into ‘Building Brands Online’.

The study (PDF) reports the need for brand advertisers to: ‘develop and utilise more innovative ad formats’; ‘cast a wider net for creative ideas’; and ‘drive cross-platform campaign integration’; in order to realise the real potential value of online advertising.

by Steve Richards 04 June 2010 09:48am 0 comments

Politics and social media: the Good, the Bad & the Ugly

This month I’ve continued the theme from the last post on TV brands and social media, and have applied our social media reputation scoring to the political domain.

So whose performance is good, whose is bad and which party’s approach is downright ugly?

by Steve Richards 28 January 2010 12:01pm 5 comments

TV brands and social media: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I’ve set myself a social media challenge: to look at three brands every month within a specific industry to find out how well they’re doing in the social media space, or not.

I’ll rate them in terms of their performance alongside others in the same sector. I’ll share what I find here and really welcome your comments on my findings.

by Steve Richards 11 December 2009 09:39am 2 comments