Unethical!! This is the standard reaction to the news that Facebook manipulated the feed of 600,000 users in an attempt to determine whether this would affect their emotional state. So is this response valid? Facebook data scientists tweaked the Newsfeed algorithm of these users skewing the number of positive or negative terms displayed. The future postings of those users were monitored and the result suggests that emotional states can be transmitted across a social network.

So let’s review the formula. You generate the content and the social networks where you post take most of the money made through selling advertising. Does this sounds a little unfair? Well not really, without the social networks you would not have a place to easily connect and communicate with your audience, even if you do have a large and loyal following. In addition, many could argue that the content posted by some of the highest earning YouTube stars is not with the millio

It was a story made for social media, a mother selling her daughters One Direction tickets on eBay. Although it was not the action of selling the tickets that created the hype, it was the commentary around the reason for the sale with Bek Piscioneri unleashing a tirade on eBay describing how her daughter’s behaviour had cost her and her bitchy little friends the chance to see their idols in concert. The commentary that extended well beyond the Internet discussed whether or n

I get it, it is better that brands display their human side, so when engaging through social media staff should be empowered to share a joke at an appropriate time. This will ensure responses appear less robotic or sterile. Although you would have noticed there are some people who are actually quite funny? They deliver the right joke in the right tone at the right time (most of the time), although this is a tactic that many cannot employ because unfortunately most people are

For many brands social media is still predominately used as a broadcast tool and as a result the focus for these organisations is on friends and followers as a key metric of success. If you are going to say something you want people to hear it, and it is even better if they promote it to their network as the reach of your message is even larger. It all sounds good, until you look a little deeper. Let’s take Twitter as an example as over 64% of large businesses in Australia re

When William Shakespeare’s wrote the line “All the worlds a stage” I guess he never had any real understanding as to how this would be quite literally adopted by marketers as a strategy that is now commonly used by many major brands as they leverage the opportunities born from the era of digital and social. The act of theatre marketing looks to create a staged scene in a random location, the execution is only visible to a few who participate but can be shared with audiences a

There has been a lot of news recently on the topic hacked social media accounts, with the most publicised being the Associated Press pro-Syrian hackers hoax tweets that triggered a brief $200 billion downturn in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. A common question I see being asked as a result of this well publicised event is “how safe are your social accounts?” The first point to note is that where the barrier to entry on any site which are protected by information alone ther

We are all very familiar with the line, “there is an App for everything”. In the rush to get rich quick, grow brand engagement and even rip people off there has nearly been over 775,000 Apps developed for the iPhone since 2008. So what do you do if you work in the marketing department of an organisation that does not have a desperate need for an App and you are told that you need to build an App as important part of growing engagement with your brand. The team at Huggies in B

This week has been a busy one for Cher’s and her fans, the news of her death would have come as a shock to many, but it would have been more of a shock to Cher herself considering she was very much alive and well. No, this was not one of those fake Twitter celebrity deaths that have been common over the past 2 years, the hashtag that caused many to panic #nowthatcherisdead was real. The only problem was that this was more about Margaret Thatcher than it was about Cher. So onc

Social media is a game changer, business are now forced to be transparent and focus on building a brand that will be measured by trust within the communities which they operate. This risk is that this concept somehow makes us all believe that as a result the world will be a better place (I can almost hear the harps playing now) as the soulless, heartless companies will as a result fall and their executives will be forced to retreat to their multi-million dollar mansions to hi

If you follow the Oscars you would have seen a number of predications of the winners based on the monitoring of social media that was published in the days before the event. With the amount of buzz associated with the Oscars it is not a bad strategy to find some way to be become part of the conversation and with the winners announced I thought it would be good to analyse a few who made predictions across the main categories and see how good they were at predicting the true ou

Dick Smith is furious that a television advertisement he filmed for Australia Day, which is saturated with “Dick” jokes and innuendo, has been deemed too offensive to air during prime time television. If you are one of the few that has not seen it by now it is worth watching and includes an elderly woman wearing a cardigan stating: “There’s only one Dick I’ll be eating on Australia Day,” while a farmer ploughing his fields proclaims: “I love Dick”. If you have followed the fa

I just want to set the record straight, social media does work and people do share content. The reason I have been motivated to make this comment comes off the back of receiving another one of those posts asking me to “like or share” the post so that they can either: Prove to their boss that social media does work and people do actually share content Win a bet with their friends To see if anyone who is connected to them is reading this post. I feel it is now important to prov

In case you have missed it, Kim Dotcom is expected to unveil file-locker service Mega and sister service Megabox at his Auckland mansion on January 20, which happens to be the anniversary of his arrest on copyright and “racketeering” charges. So why all the excitement? The first reason is that anyone who is surrounded by controversy like Kim Dotcom attracts a lot of media attention and it appears that many technology journalist and bloggers have been invited to the mansion. A

If someone walked into the office of your CMO with the proposal to get more coverage than any global media campaign that they have executed in the past and for less the money than they have spent previously then I am sure their eyes would light up with excitement. The only catch in this case is they need to sponsor a guy who is going to jump from a balloon at the edge of the earth’s atmosphere. It would be about now the CMO would entertain the thought of getting involved in e