Danny Brown's Blog, page 45

On Standing Up to Cyberbullying

Earlier this week, my ArCompany colleague Hessie Jones wrote a damning blog post on the state of social networks and their approaches to cyberbullying.

It’s a powerful read and looks at both sides of the coin – is it merely down to platforms to tackle, or users of the platforms as well, by speaking up when they see something wrong happening?

As someone who’s suffered bullying as a child, it struck home with me, especially now since online personas make it easy to target victim(s) behind a veil...

Why Smart Marketers Combine Automated AND Conversational Insights

Over at his always thought-provoking blog, Rich Becker shares a post today entitled, Will Automation Steal the Soul from Social? It’s an enlightening read and a great discussion starter.

In the post, Rich makes the following compelling arguments on why automation is bad for social media:

Bots (fake, automated Twitter accounts) attract bots, giving accounts the aura of popularity while never reaching a real human being;

The [platform] shift from conversation to broadcast is a symptom of what mark...

3 Reasons You’ll Hate the Influence Marketing Book

Back in May this year, Influence Marketing – the book I co-authored with Sam Fiorella – was published.

Published by the Que Biz-Tech imprint of business publisher Pearson, it was the result of 3-4 years of criticism of current influence models, as well as years of research, client work and case studies that highlighted what real influence means.

Since the book was published, a few folks have asked if the book would be of use to them, based on their goals, personal and professional. Instead of w...

The Sunday Share – Mobile Design Trends in 2013

As a business resource,Slidesharestands pretty much head and shoulders above most other content platforms.

From presentations to educational content and more, you can find information and curated media on pretty much any topic you have an interest in.

As a research solution, Slideshare offers analysis from some of the smartest minds on the web across all verticals.

These include standard presentations, videos, multimedia and more.

Which brings us to this week’s Sunday Share.

Every week, I’ll be sh...

Without Context, Data is Meaningless

There’s a big push at the minute by marketers and technology vendors around the concept and importance of Big Data. Run a Google Search for the term and the resulting titles of posts, articles or books speak for themselves:

Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity;
Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think;
Big Data Transforms Business;
Put a Fork In Big Data – It’s Done (just to balance the positive/negative results).

So, Big Data is cl...

The Fallacy of the Democratization of Social Influence

When we currently think of influence, we probably think of social scoring platforms like Klout, Kred and PeerIndex. These are the early adopters to the social influence space and, as such, have built an impressive level of awareness around their platforms and definition of influence.

Proponents of social scoring have praised Klout, as the most popular platform, for democratizing influence – allowing anyone to be an influencer regardless of audience size, social standing and location.

While it’s...

Why Our User Experience Should Be Determined by Data

Anyone that follows this blog regularly will know there’s a wee bit of a running joke at how often the site design changes.

What started out as a semi-regular update (say, once or twice a year) to keep the look fresh, and the content front and centre, has become almost as regular an occasion as Facebook platform updates messing up everyone’s privacy settings.

Now, while I’m really happy with the current design and the way everything flows, there’s a reason behind the recent design changes, twea...

Loyalty Is Earned, Not a Given

Back in July 2012, I spoke at an event in Toronto. During my talk, I made a quip about whether or not anyone still used Canadian smartphone giant BlackBerry (previously known as RIM).

While it was a throwaway joke that most people laughed at, it attracted its share of criticism too. James Howe, for example, thought it was classless and a low blow at a Canadian institution (for the record, we had a chat afterward and have since had beers and spoke at the same event, so all good).

Recently, on Fa...

Why No-One Cares About Your Brand

Depending who you listen to or read in the social media space, the best reason to use social media for your brand varies.It can be for listening; resolving issues; lead generation; focus groups; recruitment; and much, much more.

All good reasons. All good value. And yet….

While these are all solid enough reasons to be on social media from a brand’s point-of-view, they mean nothing unless you have an audience. Not just an audience, but also one that actually trusts and supports you, and will lis...

Where Does Online Video Sit in Social Media for Marketers?

With the recent implementation of video posts for popular photo app Instagram, and the swift uptake of the Vine platform when it was released on iPhone and later Android, video has continued to make bigger inroads into the marketing tactics for brands and agencies alike.

Whereas previously marketing budgets would allocate a certain amount for professionally-filmed video for promotion and media ad spots, the rise of YouTube as a content-rich medium for brands saw tactics change.

Videos could be...