Social media – good or bad? There seems to be no end to the debate, with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan calling it ‘the worst menace to society’ whilst others are insisting that ‘no skeptic can ignore the liberating role of Twitter’, referring to the two million tweets sent by Turkish citizens about protests in the first 24 hours after mainstream media was shut down. There’s no doubt it’s a tricky business, but how did it become so contentious, and how on earth do you get it right?

Social media and the people

For the authorities to try to get to the bottom of ‘who said what to whom’ when confidential information leaked was pointless at best, but this has all changed since the advent of social media. The global villagers can find out more, but so can the global village policeman. In other words: rumors spread uncontrollably fast – but should you be involved in spreading them, you may get caught.

As such, while the UK press’ story about the secret governmental relationship that forced ‘stunned’ UK Prime Minister David Cameron to initiate ‘crisis talks’ seemed surprisingly lacking in gory details, its impact was still significant due to the amount of tweets claiming they could reveal the names of the people involved.

Social media and organisations

Organizations and businesses are catching on quickly as they become aware, sometimes painfully, that their reputation is at stake even when they haven’t composed or even signed off on the tweets themselves. The latest social media guidelines, or restrictions, to appear are those from Network Rail (a UK transport and infrastructure provider). It’s employees, among other things, are told that on non Network Rail social media, they must not publish or discuss information not approved for public release.

Of course, information from non-official social media accounts, which are often much quicker at getting the message out, is extremely useful for commuters. But controlling the message is key here, with Network Rail making it clear that non-compliance with the policy can lead to disciplinary action, reminding their employees in an almost Big Brother-esque way that ‘social media never forgets – once published it is essentially a permanent record’.

It’s probably more difficult to argue the usefulness of pictures published on social media by army soldiers, and indeed, some Israeli troops have been told as much. Quoting security concerns, the military made the decision to limit or ban social media use just days after some Facebook photos of female soldiers in underwear and combat gear went viral.

It’s true that social media never forgets, and trying to control it may hinder spontaneity and seem overbearing but, it’s obvious that things can get out of hand, as evidenced by brands being negatively affected by social media. Your social media policy can be lenient or strict, but you’ve simply got to have one.

Still looking for insight from an expert? Time to put a brief up on the Global Services Exchange.

Image Courtesy of Vlado / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Linnea is a writer, helpless optimist and coffee addict, based on blur Group’s Content Exchange. Take a look at her personal blog at www.linneadunne.com/blog and follow her on Twitter at @linneadunne.

Is this your first time here on a blur Group blog? Why not check out our About or How it Works pages to find out more about the Global Services Exchange. If you’d like to read more blogs then you can visit blur Media blog homepage, or if you’d  like a more diverse selection of reading material then check out the other blur Group blogs.

The writer John Green was recently held up as an example of a progressive writer due to his following on YouTube (1.5 million followers), Tumblr and other social media sites, and it’s been frequently said that the next generations of writers will follow the same mould as him but will self publish. However, upon receiving the Young Adult Indies Choice Award Green surprised the crowd by declaring his allegiance to the traditional publishing system stating that self publishing “threatens the overall quality and breadth of American literature.”

In favor of traditional publishing

Green’s argument is that traditional publishing is an act of collaboration. Going against the belief of a lightning bolt of inspiration sparking a solitary work of genius he argues that publishers have made his works better, stating that without the proof readers, promoters and so forth that “I wouldn’t have the subscribers or the followers and if I did I wouldn’t have any good books to share with them.”

This is an interesting idea. It can be read as a backlash against the idea of the online publishing democracy, as idealized by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, whose convictions lie in the fact that books can be created by one person, published in his Kindle marketplace, and thus the author could be the sole entity to profit from the sale of that book (aside from Amazon of course). Green is speaking out against Bezos’ claims that old models of publishing are obsolete, stating that without the support that he received from his publishers he never would have become the author he is today. Traditional publishing provides that level of support which is lacking in the self publishing sector.

However, as with any service the quality of self publishing routes can vary wildly – some companies are very supportive of their authors, listing them on websites, giving free copies as part of the deal and so forth. Yet there are also self publishing companies that exploit people and in effect leave them to do their own promotion and their own work. However, in fairness there are also traditional publishing companies that exploit their writers.

The importance of a support network

Someone who has the means to self publish may equally have a support network of their own. With social media it is easier to find people who can market your work, local radio and TV stations that can promote it or celebrities prepared to endorse it. The key part of publishing however is to have someone to proofread work, to bounce ideas off of, to take the story and run with it and get it out there. Traditional publishing has been doing this for centuries, and it is very effective at getting books published whilst checking that those books are of the highest standard possible. Someone who self publishes could have such a support network, but it’s incredibly expensive to set up by yourself.

Finally, it is worth remembering that self publishing has been a part of publishing since the printing press. It was the people who produced pamphlets and discussed their ideas in coffee houses that resulted in a lot of classic literature. Many great works started off as serialized stories in newspapers (Charles Dickens early works being an obvious example).

Self publishing is not a perfect formula, neither is it about to go away. New technologies have given individuals more power but arguably, the democratization of content could potentially mean the loss of quality. There have always been writers’ support groups, and they now have the possibility to coalesce into something more, perhaps something that would provide the similar level of support given by traditional publishers. We can only hope, as the future of literature may depend upon it.

Image Courtesy of Gage Skidmore.

Rob Turner is an experienced copywriter based on blur Group’s Media Exchange, and outside of copywriting he runs a webcomic. Check him out on Twitter here @ReynardCity.

Is this your first time here on a blur Group blog? Why not check out our About or How it Works pages to find out more about the Global Services Exchange. If you’d like to read more blogs then you can visit blur Media blog homepage, or if you’d  like a more diverse selection of reading material then check out the other blur Group blogs.

The incredible Chinese economic boom of recent times has changed the face of global commerce for good. It’s widely known that Chinese people in general now have more disposable income than ever before, but perhaps less understood is the growth of an emerging middle class. In particular, there is one demographic that has more spending power than most people realise, and it’s one that brands would do well to take note of.

An emerging demographic

Those born after 1990, in particular, are exploiting their status as products of the government’s one-child policy. Within Chinese culture, senior family members are expected to take care of their young. This includes financial welfare and, today, a young middle-class Chinese person can draw an income from up to six family sources – two parents and four grandparents. As they are inevitably the only child, that can turn into a pretty tidy sum of money. Add a seventh stream – income from a job – and they become a very attractive prospect for marketers.

Brands capitalisation

Brands such as Tiffany, Hermes and Gucci have seen sales soar in recent years and have substantially increased the number of stores in the region. What’s more, many Chinese tourists are heading to Europe to buy their luxury goods so they can avoid paying a ‘luxury tax’ and make savings of up to 50%.

There’s a certain zeal with which the new generation of middle-class Chinese are spending their money. This is, in part, influenced by a change in perspective, made much broader by their foreign travels, educational experiences and, of course, the Internet.

“The sheer buying power of this demographic, their educational level and openness to new ideas can be very beneficial for mid to high range British brands targeting Chinese consumers. With millions more middle-class predicted to emerge, good quality British brands can really take advantage, as the luxury market is extremely competitive and cost-intensive.” - says Ben Hui, director of Language Brand Communication – a Manchester-based agency specialising in helping British companies target the Chinese market.

In the past, foreign brands have tended to focus on macro rather than micro trends. The key to reaching this demographic, according to Ben Hui, is to understand their nature and how they interact with brands, particularly through social media. “Having a clear understanding of this group of consumers will help brands select the most effective channel or platform to market and conduct sales of their products,” says Ben.

Social media engagement

This generation is engaging with social media in very sophisticated ways. Platforms such as Sina Weibo (a more advanced version of Twitter) are used not only for engaging consumers but also for the actual sale of goods.

Last year, for example, Mercedes Benz experimented selling limited editions of their Smart Cars direct to consumers via Weibo, enjoying some success. Similarly, Swiss watchmaker IWC has reached immense levels of popularity after running social media campaigns to coincide with store launches in Beijing and Macau.

But it’s not just about the Internet. Young Chinese are much more engaged with the world around them than previous generations. This has made them more politically minded, more conversant in English and other languages and, interestingly, more willing to embrace a culture of individuality, particularly when it comes to style.

As the western economies splutter back into recovery mode, brands should be looking to take advantage of Chinese growth. There are, of course, other areas of the Chinese market worth considering. But the young, self-titled ‘little princes and princesses’ are where the real money is.

Neil Stoneham is a senior copywriter based on blur Group’s Media Exchange. Check him out on Twitter here @NeilStoneham.

Image Courtesy of Ohmega1982 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Is this your first time here on a blur Group blog? Why not check out our About or How it Works pages to find out more about the Global Services Exchange. If you’d like to read more blogs then you can visit blur Media blog homepage, or if you’d  like a more diverse selection of reading material then check out the other blur Group blogs.

Originally from Germany and currently working at blur Group as a Digital Marketing Executive, I was told to write a blog about ‘10 things I learnt before writing my first blog’. Blog? 10 things? I have never written a blog before and doing one for the first time is like being thrown in at the deep end. It is completely new and you have no idea how to start, but after doing some brainstorming and looking at other blogs on blur Group, I got a feeling for what is really important when starting to write. Here are the 10 things

1. Know the audience

Before writing a blog, the writer should know who he is talking to. There’s a difference if the blog is addressed to students, reading about fashion or festivals, or if it is about a political or technological subject. Using the right technical or informal terms is important in communicating with the target group.

2. Choose the right topic

Someone writing on the farming practices in the middle east will find it hard going if their true passion is fashion. When someone is really interested in what they’re writing about it’s easier to be enthusiastic and verbose about the topic. Readers are ferociously intelligent and can tell immediately when a writer has just been asked to write about something that as compared with when they’re into their field of writing.

3. Be aware of the structure

Isn’titannoyingwhenatextdoesn’thaveanyspacebetweenthesections?

Isn’t it annoying when a text doesn’t have any space between the paragraphs? When reading a text, the first impression is the most important one. Does it look like there is no structure and it’s just sentences after sentences, even avid readers will switch off and go somewhere else if the blog is hard to read. Break it up and make it engaging with a good use of sub-headings, paragraphs, quotes, etc.

4. Keep it short and to the point

‘Don’t beat about the bush!’ – If you only follow one piece of advice this is the one. The quicker you get to the point the more engaged the reader will be. If you stretch out the point then you can lose the point, confuse the reader, and give them the wrong point.

5. Make it interesting – it’s a blog not a dissertation

The type of language and tone used in blog play a big part in how interesting it is for the reader. The first words are the most important ones. If the introduction is already of no interest, well, why should the reader go on? It’s just waste of time for them.

6. Keep it updated, and share as often you can

A blog cannot be called a blog if there it’s not updated, new content helps the reader to understand the idea behind it and helps the blogger to build up a core audience. A blog only seems reliable when the writer keeps the reader up to date with information and news.

7. Add pictures and/or videos to your blog

What’s stopping a blog from being engaging and attractive?Going multimedia can bring your blog to a whole new level. Pictures, videos as long as it belongs to the topic, everything can be added and the whole text becomes more attractive for the reader.

8. Add experts’ opinions and interesting links

Not do updates make a blog more reliable, but expert opinions about the topic and links to other relevant website help convince the reader of the value of the content.

9. Don’t forget to proofread

Getting a second opinion is always useful when publishing something. A writer might have the persuasion that he is right, but nevertheless it is important that someone reads it before any typos or incorrect items get into the public sphere.

10. Stay positive

It will take some time until the blog becomes popular and starts to receive comments, attention, and so on. But as a new blogger, the author should never give up and always think about a new topic to write about to keep their blog alive.

This blog is by Gina Gräfingholt.

Image Courtesy of renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Is this your first time here on a blur Group blog? Why not check out our About or How it Works pages to find out more about the Global Services Exchange. If you’d like to read more blogs then you can visit blur Media blog homepage, or if you’d  like a more diverse selection of reading material then check out the other blur Group blogs.

While the name Comic Con indicates a celebration of comic books this was also a place where you could play demos of video games, get autographs from celebrities and see some of the most inventive costumes you are ever likely to see.

The rise of the medium

In recent years comic books and graphic novels have become big business, as have the movies, video games and other tie-ins related to that world. In the case of DC and Marvel these adaptations have had to tie in with decades of storylines. This begs the question – how do you adapt these stories while at the same time remaining true to the character?

A good example of this is Batman. The 1992 cartoon series was hailed for its mature storylines and some of the characters created for that show (such as fan favourite and Joker sidekick Harley Quinn) have since gone on to be incorporated into the comics. Another equally popular animation was Batman: The Brave and The Bold, a quirky cartoon that sees Batman teaming up with various DC characters in a show that is closer in spirit to Adam West than Tim Burton or Christopher Nolan but at the same time maintaining the heart of the character.

With Marvel it seems more the other way round – Avengers Assemble was the cinematic equivalent of the comic crossovers that the brand was famous for, whereby heroes from one comic could conceivably end up in another with events in each title affecting the other. While some people would argue that attempting this kind of crossover was a massive risk it resulted in a box office smash (Hulk pun intended!)

Enter the videogame

One of the more intriguing Marvel adaptations is the Deadpool video game. Deadpool has been a fan favourite in Marvel comics because he is a very post modern comic character- he regularly breaks the fourth wall, commenting on the fact that he is in a comic (this also happened in his appearance in beat em up super crossover Marvel v Capcom 3, where the player could use Deadpool’s health bar to beat up their opponent!)

There is also the fact that sometimes it goes the other way too! Graphic novels that tie in with the release of big movies (or even quirkier titles such as Southland Tales) have become increasingly common as a means of promoting an upcoming movie and in some cases filling in plot holes (or in the case of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer comics continuing the story where the television show left off).

With comics there are certain things that need to stay consistent regardless of the medium- the tone may be different, the way the story is structured may be different. But there are certain elements that you mess with at your peril! While you want as wide an audience as possible you should never forget the people that make a comic a success are the readers themselves!

Rob Turner is an experienced copywriter based on blur Group’s Media Exchange, and outside of copywriting he runs a webcomic. Check him out on Twitter here @ReynardCity.

Is this your first time here on a blur Group blog? Why not check out our About or How it Works pages to find out more about the Global Services Exchange. If you’d like to read more blogs then you can visit blur Media blog homepage, or if you’d  like a more diverse selection of reading material then check out the other blur Group blogs.

“Effective spycraft has long called for cover—a job, family or routine that would keep a government agent from drawing undue attention. Now, that calculation extends to spies’ use of social media.” Anton Troianovski and Siobhan Gorman, Social Media Post New Riddle for CIA

The latest and greatest addition to the pop culture spy canon is, without a shadow of a doubt, Archer. The show’s namesake is a modern-day Bond with a full-blown drinking problem, and misogynist attitude, but all the skills you’d expect of a crack secret agent. He works for ISIS (International Secret Intelligence Service) – the worst intelligence agency in the world.

The perfect cover story

There’s an episode in SE4 called Live & Let Dine where Archer and his team go undercover in celebrity chef Lance Casteau’s restaurant, Seize, supposedly to foil an assassination attempt. As sous chef ‘Randy Randerson’ Archer is expected to play the part of the restaurant employee with conviction, creating a character imbued with the right character traits, skills and backstory. But for agents in this situation, there’s more to consider than just believable face-to-face interactions. Their social media personas now need to play a role too.

There are two main issues facing undercover agents when it comes to their social media presence. Firstly, creating a believable backstory for an undercover persona now needs to include an active, believable social media presence. The use of networks like Facebook and Twitter are becoming ubiquitous and non-participation could raise flags.

It’s likely that Randy Randerson, an adult male American male working as a sous chef would be engaged on a number of different social networks. Facebook? Probably. Twitter? Maybe. LinkedIn? There’s a good chance. Instagram is a chef favourite since it allows them to share their creations in a visual way. It’s also likely that, growing up, Randerson would have created, used and eventually abandoned a number of alternative networks. A government operative attempting to build a profile on the supposed sous chef might wonder why he had no MySpace profile back in 2006.

Social networks

The second issue is that undercover agents, especially younger agents, may already have a presence on a variety of social networks. This increases the risk that their cover could be blown, since someone tracking their digital history could uncover their true identity. Even for laypeople, services like the TinEye Reversible Image Search exists, allowing us to see where else profile pictures have been used online. It’s also possible to mine connections, like your friend list on Facebook, to understand who you are and what you really do – something that the CIA’s social media guidelines are attempting to address.

“Facebook friendships between undercover officers and people openly working for the CIA were discouraged… Among other things, such connections could be used to identify undercover agents, through link analysis.” – Anton Troianovski and Siobhan Gorman, Social Media Post New Riddle for CIA

The cat-and-mouse game between undercover agents and intelligence agencies is one that grows ever more complex as digital personas become more expansive and more diffuse across a range of networks. The skills needed for real life 007s certainly go far beyond a convincing set of accents and have expanded to include the ability to build convincing connections across a range of social platforms, creating a digital persona that is as nuanced and complex as their physical creation.

Holly Knowlman is a tea-loving Brit living in Toronto. She’s a writer, event inventor and digital communications professional. She enjoys many things including: noisy nights out, technology, contemporary art, adventures, her bike, soup, cider and trashy celebrity culture. Follow Holly on Twitter @HollyKnowlman or check out her blog.

Is this your first time here on a blur Group blog? Why not check out our About or How it Works pages to find out more about the Global Services Exchange. If you’d like to read more blogs then you can visit blur Media blog homepage, or if you’d  like a more diverse selection of reading material then check out the other blur Group blogs.

At Google I/O, their annual developer conference, Google announced that they would be entering the music streaming market with a new subscription service called Google Play Music All Access. Billed as ‘radio without rules,’ the product will compete directly with existing streaming services like Spotify, Rdio and Deezer and aims to become the go-to source for discovering and collecting music.

Cloud based players are the future

Subscription-based streaming is fast becoming the standard for music content delivery online. Audiophiles who cut their teeth on P2P download services like Napster, LimeWire and Kazaa are embracing the model, handing over their cash in return for access to millions of tracks available across multiple devices. Spotify, the UK’s most popular music streaming service, now has around 6 million subscribers and 24 million active users worldwide, and in 2012 global music sales rose for the first time since 1999.

It’s unsurprising, then, that Google wants in on this lucrative market. Google Play Music All Access will be available for $9.99/month, or $7.99/month for early adopters who sign up before June 30th. Not only did they beat rival Apple to the punch with this announcement, it’s also a kick in the teeth for existing subscription services who now have to compete against the might of Google.

Uh-Oh, Google’s here

Any CEO who wakes up to discover Google is launching a competing service would be worried, and rightfully so. However, what they’re offering on first glance doesn’t seem too different from what users have come to expect from rival services like Spotify. Google has orchestrated licensing deals with a number of labels including Universal, Sony and Warner to give users access to millions of tracks, offers intuitive music selection that means you don’t have to pick every track, and is available both on desktop and on Android devices. Additionally, with Google Play Music, you can also download actual music files from the cloud provided you own the MP3 somewhere.

At this moment in time there are still a few elements that make Spotify a more attractive investment. Its supports a much broader ecosystem of third-party devices across mobile and gaming and it has a fantastic app market. Being able to offer access to apps for sites like Pitchfork and HypeMachine within the platform is a tasty add-on for those looking to discover new music, and this is something Google Play Music lacks right now.

But it’s early days. The might of Google isn’t infallible (look at Google+ for an example of a tricky labour) but their resources and access to users are difficult things to compete with. Ultimately time will tell if one service can eventually outstrip the other, but regardless it’s a hefty blow to services like Spotify when it comes to fighting it out for market share.

Holly Knowlman is a tea-loving Brit living in Toronto. She’s a writer, event inventor and digital communications professional. She enjoys many things including: noisy nights out, technology, contemporary art, adventures, her bike, soup, cider and trashy celebrity culture. Follow Holly on Twitter @HollyKnowlman or check out her blog.

Is this your first time here on a blur Group blog? Why not check out our About or How it Works pages to find out more about the Global Services Exchange. If you’d like to read more blogs then you can visit blur Media blog homepage, or if you’d  like a more diverse selection of reading material then check out the other blur Group blogs.

Sky sports dominance is unsurprising since they are backed by the media monolith that is News Corp. With this backing they’ve managed to remain on top despite competition from ESPN, Setanta, and ITV Digital after Premier League football packages were broken up in order to encourage a more level playing field. ITV Digital even managed to not just fail to compete by managed to be a notorious failure as they had a massively negative impact on football league teams that were not in the Premier League.

A challenger appears

But after a massive investment BT Sport have decided to set themselves up as challengers against their long established rivals. Their big marketing weapon in the fight against Sky is a simple word – free. The adverts show off their sports coverage in terms of a “big show” and it does seem that BT themselves are setting themselves up as the good guy wrestlers in this particular smack down.

In simple terms, BT is freely offering Premier League coverage to people who are signing up to broadband packages. This has been something they’ve been pushing in their marketing strategy and the word free is a prominent part of it. The announcement had such a big impact that when it was announced it took 6% off Sky’s share price. The implications of the marketing seemed to be – we’re coming for you and we’re just going to keep hitting you with something you can’t counter.

Can Sky counter BT’s strategy

Though having said this Sky did indeed have a defence prepared, although whether this will convince the general public is another matter. As Sky have pointed out the use of the word “free” in BT’s marketing is a tad misleading. Given the fact that BT have spent hundreds of millions on sports coverage it was likely that they would find some way to recoup their costs. Therefore in order to cover this offer it will result in more expensive services. One estimate suggests that someone switching from Sky to BT would only really save around 55p per month.

Furthermore it has been suggested that only around 1 to 1.5 million of the potential audience would be willing to pay the additional cost to get both Sky and BT in order to get a full program of football (as well as other sports such as rugby, Formula One and so on). Essentially this is a very small demographic on which to hang a very large investment!

This means that BT are likely to lose a significant amount of money in the first year of operating. However it is worth pointing out that when Sky first launched Sky News they did not see profit from their investment for ten years. Whether BT has the clout to put in similar investment remains to be seen, but BT just being there as competition means that Sky have to engage with them and this ironically draws attention to the existence of BT as a competitor.

To paraphrase Sir Alex Ferguson it will be interesting to see if Sky’s “noisy neighbours” end up challenging for their title or end up with a very expensive marketing gimmick that fails to do its job.

Rob Turner is an experienced copywriter based on blur Group’s Media Exchange, and outside of copywriting he runs a webcomic. Check him out on Twitter here @ReynardCity.

Is this your first time here on a blur Group blog? Why not check out our About or How it Works pages to find out more about the Global Services Exchange. If you’d like to read more blogs then you can visit blur Media blog homepage, or if you’d  like a more diverse selection of reading material then check out the other blur Group blogs.

Fancy a career in politics? Great – you’ll probably be the next big thing just as long as you’ve never been part of a Twitter row, been tagged in party pictures on Facebook or commented on a blog post in an overly-abrasive manner. The social media trawl is here to stay, and it will get in the way of anyone whose past isn’t perfect.

Out of context tweets

The tweet below is Hackney MP Diane Abbott’s and refer to a tweet, indeed taken out of context, which led to her having to publically apologise after people started calling for her resignation. Abbott had in a series of tweets been discussing how the term ‘black community’ was used in reference to the Stephen Lawrence case, whereby one of her 140-character snippets about white people playing divide and rule was retweeted and dubbed racist.

Abbott didn’t have to resign in the end, but the saga typifies a recent trend in politics: the social media trawl. The theory behind said phenomenon means, at least if you ask the Onion, that the US presidential election in 2040 will be fought between candidates already unelectable because of Facebook. In other words: we’ve all done something we shouldn’t have done or said something we shouldn’t have said on the world wide web.

Soon, it’s been suggested, every political party will be employing social media trawlers to find their opponents’ previous slip-ups, all the while following in the footsteps of their own candidates to wipe away potential spin doctor gold dust. Oh yes: politicians’ dodgy pasts will be dug up, and they will pay. In fact, some have paid already; last month, first ever Youth Police and Crime Commissioner Paris Brown had to step down from her post as a result of stupidly ignorant tweets from a few years back.

Social Media Censorship

The BBC’s refusal to broadcast Comic Relief footage with comedian Frankie Boyle, all because of a joke in which he said he wished that the Queen had died, was met with angry comments saying it was political correctness gone mad and that comedy has to be a free zone in regards to censorship. The BBC insisted that there are things one simply shouldn’t joke about – a sentiment all too familiar to the controversial comedian.

Perhaps the discussion about the social media trawl as political tool ends up in a similar place on the political correctness versus freedom of speech scale, the difference being that we expect a good bit more professionalism from our elected politicians than we do from the likes of Mr. Boyle. But it’s easy to claim that politicians must have flawless pasts, and just as easy to forget that we somehow also expect them to be humans – not machines spitting out 140-character soundbites.

Today’s kids are all over social media. And today’s kids will one day grow up and become the leaders of the future. Do we really expect them to have left behind an entirely politically correct and ideologically sound trail of updates and interactions – even when taken out of context? It makes you wonder whether anyone will ever want to engage with politics at all – especially considering all the gorey stuff surfing, as a competing pastime, has to offer. And let’s be honest: it’s not like extreme levels of engagement and an open-minded, human touch are what define Brand Politics as things stand.

Image Courtesy of markuso / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Linnea is a writer, helpless optimist and coffee addict, based on blur Group’s Content Exchange. Take a look at her personal blog at www.linneadunne.com/blog and follow her on Twitter at @linneadunne.

Is this your first time here on a blur Group blog? Why not check out our About or How it Works pages to find out more about the Global Services Exchange. If you’d like to read more blogs then you can visit blur Media blog homepage, or if you’d  like a more diverse selection of reading material then check out the other blur Group blogs.

Targeted demographics have been at the root of marketing campaigns since time immemorial. In the old days, demographics were based largely on age and class, but as the boundaries of our social strata have blurred, marketers have to constantly come up with new ways of identifying and ultimately targeting the most lucrative client base.

In New York, Turn – a cloud marketing platform – have recently identified what they term the ‘digital elite’. They’re white-collar professionals between 21-34, living in cities and earning more than £50,000. But if you look at it the old fashioned way, it’s not really that helpful.

What’s important is the way these people engage with the Internet, and that’s why they’re in such demand.

The ‘digital elite’ are exposed to 24 times more online advertising than the average web user and are more likely to respond to ads on Facebook and mobile phone apps.

It’s a demographic that companies are willing to pay good money for. According to a report MediaPost, the group commands an average electronic cost of 75p compared to the measly 40p commanded by the average user. That’s a markup of nearly 85%.

The report goes even further and highlights some impressive specifics on how smarter marketing strategies could work. For example, those earning over £65,000 are more likely to interact with consumer electronics brands on Facebook, whilst those on less than £25,000 are more likely to respond to display ads.

All this, of course, is very modern and relevant to current trends. But once you have this information, what exactly do you do with it?

Online videos are fast becoming the online marketing platform to hit the ‘digital elite’ but as we mention in a previous blog, it’s not always that easy to get your efforts to go viral. While it could be argued that some videos are contrived to get consumers hitting the ‘share’ button, it’s certainly not an exact science.

What matters is a smart marketing strategy that takes into account your ideal demographic and, importantly, how they engage specifically with social media. It’s no longer a case of how old someone is or how they get their kicks on a Saturday night. Instead, it’s all about who is likely to click on what. And that’s a whole new ball game altogether.

Image Courtesy of Feelart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Neil Stoneham is a senior copywriter based on blur Group’s Media Exchange. Check him out on Twitter here @NeilStoneham.

Is this your first time here on a blur Group blog? Why not check out our About or How it Works pages to find out more about the Global Services Exchange. If you’d like to read more blogs then you can visit blur Media blog homepage, or if you’d  like a more diverse selection of reading material then check out the other blur Group blogs.