Key performance indicators (KPIs) help you to determine whether or not you are on the right track toward reaching your marketing goals. If you haven’t already, develop your SMART goals today. You must define success in order to attain it. Depending on your goals, there are a number of ways to monitor and track your [...]

During 2011 blog page views across blur Group’s network more than doubled. We know that they’re a sought-out information source for those working in the creative industries, those using them and people looking for that different perspective on new startups, the latest art, marketing must-haves, design desires and a view on the latest trends. At the [...]

Human Media Fundamentals, the concepts which define the way to a new form of communication, one that represents the end of the Social era in its pure state of art. It’s time for everything to be placed on a map and coherently drawn – thank you Luis Calabuig. Human Media makes it possible for a company to offer [...]

At blur Group, social media is the sea in which we swim. We recruit creatives, engage with potential customers, promote our blogs, share interesting content and we’ve found that Twitter is the most effective platform to do all that, and more. Here’re the tools, initiatives and people impacting Twitter today. Users were outraged by the introduction [...]

The world of social media is a scary place. Do you fear the crowds of shrieking fans, the cackling trolls and things that go bump in the blogosphere? Here’s our list of the top ten social media horrors. Read, beware and don’t go down to the basement to investigate that strange noise. Chapstick’s social media [...]

A new study suggests that widely accepted Twitter strategies may be misguided. The report, Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy, rejects what it calls the “modern view” flows according to interpersonal connections among ordinary users, and the general marketing willingness of a community to accept an innovation. Rather, it seems that information cascades down [...]

As we continue to progress our social-led approach at blur Group, it’s easy to forget what happens when organisations display reluctance to engage in use of social media. With 83% of the Fortune 500 companies using one of the social media platforms it may seem that it’s only a small minority now that hasn’t embraced [...]

It’s no secret that social media is an effective marketing strategy for businesses to build brand awareness.  You set up a Twitter account, send out some messages and that should be enough, right? Unfortunately, no.  Successfully leveraging social media is a challenge, but if done right, it can be the linchpin for any business. Tom [...]

This interesting tweet appeared on my timeline this morning: “I just unfollowed someone for making a horrible comment about his own customers”. And it sums up the most obvious issue in using social networks: the fact that personal and business will at some point, coalesce and overlap. Plenty has been written about the obvious ‘rogue’ [...]

It’s come to our attention that there’s still some businesses that have blogging reservations. In the past we’ve talked about how to blog, tips and techniques on writing the perfect corporate blog and generally how to make blogging part of your social mix. So we don’t think we need to convince many of the good [...]

Well, the cat’s out the bag, the skeleton’s out the closet, the beans have been spilled…and all other truth-revealing metaphors you care to think of. We wrote earlier today that blur Group is disrupting the status quo. That part, at least, is true. But Father, we have sinned. We did a naughty and told a [...]

Technology makes everyone’s life a whole lot easier. Technology gets you out of bed in the morning, it gets you to work and even entertains you en-route. Technology, in other words, is your friend. Within businesses, technology streamlines processes and automates workflows. All this adds up to massive time-savings – and time, as we all [...]

If you blinked, you may have missed it. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK’s “independent regulator of advertising across all media”, has tweaked its codes of practice to include companies’ marketing messages on their own website and across other non-paid-for advertising spaces. The official guidelines can be seen here. The ASA already regulates internet [...]

Social media is very much a double-edged sword for businesses. Whilst it can help raise profiles and generate revenue, it can also bite businesses hard where it hurts. Companies can only exercise so much control over their online exposure, and if your customers want to talk about you, there’s not much you can do to [...]

Social media is all about mass participation.  Millions of people have Twitter accounts, Facebook profiles and blogs – the trick is finding the most influential people and engaging with them. How do you measure influence?  There’s no definitive answer because ‘influence’ can mean many different things. But generally it can be broken down into three [...]

Social media has evolved. Whilst it was once a nice little thing businesses did on the side to complement their main operations, it has developed into a life form of its own. Social media lives and breathes – ignore its potency at your peril. It goes without saying that if you invest a certain amount [...]

When Financial Directors, a breed that can normally produce a spreadsheet from a dinner party conversation, talk about tangible but unmeasurable ROI where social media is concerned you know that showing hard numbers is, well, hard.  But as we mentioned in our introduction to ROI measurement, financial return is part of the mix. We described [...]

Measurement, or its absence, is frequently held up as a reason to hold back on Social Media Marketing. CXOs will wave their hands in the air reluctant to embrace a dark art, an unmeasurable activity that will take up resources but, as many articles cite, is more about being there than actually delivering measurable results. [...]

Last year the number of ‘online’ ads overtook traditional ads for the first time. But should we have been surprised? The really outstanding takeaway from this is the fact that we’re still differentiating between the two media types. Folks in the Creative Services  are demons for putting approaches into boxes. Online versus traditional. Social media as [...]

As anyone with a lapsed gym membership knows, New Year’s Resolutions have a tendency to, well, not show much resolve. So we thought we’d make blur Group‘s resolutions not easy, but eminently achievable by ourselves and by other businesses who want to ensure that 2011 is an exciting and successful year. Let’s go! 1) Engagement [...]

2010 draws to a close and everyone is predicting the most obvious outcome of 2011: that social media is going to be big for business. What still seems to be brushed under the carpet is that as companies embrace the social media trend, leap on the bandwagon, go twitter-crazy or Facebook themselves up they’re still [...]

2010 has seen blur Group’s Creative Crowdsourcing approach gain sizable momentum with large corporate clients, new startups and Crowds of Crowdies. Stirring up the world of advertising, it’s time to consider what’s going to happen in 2011 and what will win out. 1) Marketing will return to its first love: creativity. This year, new platforms [...]

‘We plan to take Crowdsourcing further than it has ever gone before….. We want media companies to engage users as citizen journalists, and NBC2 is just the first step toward this. We want to enable local governments to encourage users to report about hazards on the road to help keep our roads safe. We want major [...]

Blogging’s been around for just over a decade. There are something like 200 Million blogs in the ether. 43% of businesses in the US are expected to blog in 2011. It seems there’s a writer in all of us. And yet the blog hasn’t really changed that much. It’s still basically a date stamped, comment [...]

There’s something going on in agency land. The tectonic plates seem to be shifting. Some say a revolution is under foot. Clients are looking for something new. Big brands are voting with their feet and backing the Crowdsourced Creative Agency.