Business Week recently wrote about the most used work in the English Language today; the results may or may not surprise you. ‘Twitter’ was found to be the most popular word. According to the article, Twitter is billion pound industry leader in social media. Almost all businesses today are familiar with some form of social media; a Facebook or Twitter account can be a great help in marketing and branding. Many companies are expanding their social media use to include customer service. However, not all social media platforms are alike; Twitter seems to be leading the way in terms of speed of...

As well as obviously investing in promotional products, is your organisation linked as well as it could be with social media platforms? Facebook has passed the landmark of half a billion global users, and has released fresh statistics about time spent on the site. This announcement means that 7.4% of the estimated 6.79 billion world population is now signed up to the site. It has taken only five months to add the last 100 million users, while the first 100 million took it almost five years. Since February this year, when Facebook last released statistics on reaching 400 million users, the total time...

The NHS rolled out a £25,000 ‘Cocktales’ campaign designed to highlight the dangers of drink to young people specifically in Derbyshire, only to see it taken off YouTube.   The video shows a young woman who urinates in the street, falls over and is then jeered at by a group of passing young men. When I saw this clip, I just presumed it was a fly on the wall documentary about Preston, and didn’t think anything of it. However ‘Bloody Mary’ received 15,000 hits in the eight days it was on YouTube and was also distributed to local media.   Alison Pritchard, from Derbyshire...

The centre of everyone’s universe, Facebook is set to make a few more changes to its design, even though their tech people have only just finished re-jigging things. These are set to be alterations to their homepage, as well making their search function more important.   However there is no pleasing the general public, as people’s lives were turned upside down, when previous alteration about notifications and the general layout of things came into place. These tweaks have come from screen shots seen on a French technology blog PCinpact.com. However Facebook has not confirmed whether the pages...

South African brand Savanna Cider is launching its biggest ever UK on-trade promotion, focused around the world of Facebook. The online competition invites drinkers to “Win your own Savanna party” for you and 99 of your closest friends. The quirky alcoholic drink, is marketed along the lines of; “its dry but you can drink it”.   Their Facebook app allows users to enter 100 friends for their preferred party list. This is then circulated virally to encourage more people to enter, with other links on sites like Bebo and Twitter.   The DJ hosted bash, worth £10k will be held at the Big Chill...

Who would have thought car insurance would have made such a viral sensation, especially in the form of a Meer Kat in pyjamas. Price comparison site Comparethemarket.com last weekend unveiled its latest television and viral ad starring billionaire Meer Kat Aleksandr Orlov.   Aleksandr explained: “Despite many fans of previous advert, peoples still making mistake. New ad will let peoples know about my Meer Kat business, not other website, Comparethemarket.com, which is for humans searching for cheap deals on their car insurance.”   Created by creative agency VCCP, the advertisement has...

Remember when I reported news about Hula-Hoops requesting the public to send in videos of their fingers messing around with their favourite crisps on them? Well they have recently launched their TV add to encourage us to get filming, which features two would be YMCA stars. Helen Warren-Piper, marketing director of Bagged Snacks at UBUK, said: “This new TV advertising campaign, along with the on-pack promotion and Hula Hoops website will drive further consumer engagement with the brand providing retailers with increased sales opportunities. “Some brands are the keepers of undeniable truths....

The clever chaps at The Mugstore have just set up a Flickr account, showing off examples of their printed promotional mugs. These high quality images will act as a  great guide if your in the market for branded mugs, as they will give you a clear idea of what you may be investing it.   Click here to see their latest images of branded mugs they have produced, and of course feel free to get in contact with them if you have any questions. The beauty of having their branded mugs on Flickr, is that you can keep on eye on what client’s they have been working with. Also by looking at examples of their...

Anyone who has ever used an E-mail, thinks Spammers are as popular as Nick Griffin in a Mosque. No matter how many times you ask me, I will not be tempted to buy Viagra from Singapore (at least not for a few years). Similarly in my business E-mails, I’m not tempted to by ‘best price USB’ from Hong Kong, when Spam E-mails are written in pigeon English.   If you’re a fellow blog writer and are non to impressed by spam mailers, check out http://www.stopforumspam.com, which is a very useful website. The site was created to be used as a central database for known forum spambots – so well done...

People have been going mad about Twitter, but is it all media hype? ‘Micro-blogging’ still remains in the hands of the few according to Harvard research. Despite the fact that where constantly told the whole world is tweeting about everyone else just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content.   Estimates suggest it now has more than 10 million users and is growing faster than any other social network. However, the Harvard team found that more than half of all people using Twitter updated their page less than once every 74 days.   And most people only ever “tweet” once...