If you filter the posts properly there is a near daily drip-feed of discussion points, ranging from debates on the best pickled food (onion, egg, or gherkin?) A few months ago I came across a blog post which compared Nestle’s Polo Mint social media campaign to that of  Mars – owned chewing gum brand Wrigley’s Extra. Now that the campaigns have been going for a few months it’s interesting to see how things have developed. Polo Mints. When it comes to eating Polos, are you a “sucker&# or a “cruncher&# ?  Wrigley’s Extra. Conclusion. times the fans. MORE >>

The number of UK consumers actively discussing and feeding back on brands in social media is relatively high, and underlines how critical it is for all brands and organisations to address how they are using social media and to make sure they are using it in a way that makes sense for them, and adds value to them as well as to their audience. Image by Mykl Roventine via Flickr. Internet users in the UK are more likely to follow brands in social media than they are to follow celebrities. of users follow celebrities, more than one in five (20.3%) follow brands. The survey found that 7.7% MORE >>

You typically follow the brand if you are interested in their tweets and message being part of your feed. Image via Wikipedia. Last week we looked a ranking of the top ten brands on Facebook globally, based on the number of people who ‘like’ them. There were no real surprises – Starbucks came top and the rest of the top ten was filled with well-known consumer and fashion brands.When considering brands on Twitter this story is sometimes different and it is not always the obvious brands that are most followed. It’s a museum: @Tate. Brand. Followers. 106,881. 69,411. MORE >>

LinkedIn today enables industries that are not specifically digital to become more digitally aware by feeding business account holders news that is relevant to them from online sources. LinkedIn has implemented several upgrades over the past few months that will mean a change to how companies (and individuals in companies) use it. Here’s a quick summary of the key changes: LinkedIn today. LinkedIn today is a new feature which allows users to get relevant news from their peers. In essence, it becomes its own content curation system. Share function. For Content Providers. Video. MORE >>

The best approaches to customer service are not to have a special social media route to get your problems dealt with, but to feed social media into your existing channels. Image by IronRodArt – Royce Bair – BUSY via Flickr. One of my favourite podcasts is Listen to Lucy from the FT’s Lucy Kellaway and this week she has a great piece addressing how brands are responding on Twitter. Specifically how Starbucks responds to some Tweets about the brand. The piece is, like all her podcasts, humourous but with a serious message. Kellaway makes this point succinctly. Tweet This! MORE >>