Social Media

As proved by Starbucks and Converses and use of the word ‘movie’, you can bet you you bottom dollar (pound) that if the American’s are drinking/wearing/doing it, it won’t be long before we are too.

Launched last Thursday, and currently only available in the States, is the new Facebook application ‘Facebook Places’. Places allows you to ‘check in’ at your current location, giving friends the opportunity to see your whereabouts immediately. Are you coincidently attending the same event? Brilliant! Have you skipped their dull birthday ‘do to attend something far more glamorous? Not so brilliant…

As if this wasn’t likely to become addictive enough, you can also tag those that are with you, like you would in a photo or status update, as well as browse other people who are checked in at the same place. Obviously, this has raised numerous privacy issues – something which the site is all too familiar with dealing with.

But what’s the implication for small businesses? Aside making it even easier for skiving employees to be caught out by a social networking slip-up, there are several advantages to using geolocation technology.

Twitter has offered geolocation for tweets since last year, as well as its ‘local trends’ feature allowing local business the ability to promote themselves as a ‘trending topic’. Location tagging network Foursquare also found popularity with small businesses, many which used the opportunity as a free platform to get themselves noticed amongst local customers. Of course, now that Facebook’s caught up, the site’s tendency to crush its competitors (i.e. The Myspace Effect) could see changes in the way geolocation is implemented elsewhere.

Facebook’s huge online presence means this latest development is likely to be even more effective for small businesses aiming to benefit from geolocation technology. Businesses in less commercial regions are advised to offer incentives to customers on geolocation networks in order to generate interest and draw people in from more tech-savvy areas. Teaming up with other local businesses to do this can be even more profitable for the companies involved, as well as the local area.

Geolocation content also has the advantage of operating in realtime, and by featuring in conjunction with social networking sites it offers businesses the opportunity to utilise valuable social interaction. Many businesses already use static location services, such as GPS, but the social aspect of applications such as Facebook Places are much more effective when it comes to networking opportunities.

Of course, businesses (large or small) will be well aware that no amount of advertising can beat social recommendations from real people, and Facebook Places could well be the answer into generating such valuable publicity. Yet whether a rise in corporate use of geolocation technology from those keen to make their make their mark using social media might result in little more then irritating promotional advertisements and more organised after-work socials is yet to be seen.

You may be thinking, firstly, who on earth is Justin Bieber and secondly why am I writing about him? Well, unless you are a tween reading this, which is unlikely, or have young daughters, you’re forgiven for not knowing who he is.

Justin Bieber is an internet sensation. In 2008, his music, which his mum had posted on youtube, was discovered by manager to the stars, Scooter Braun, who arranged a meeting between him and the singer Usher. The rest is history. Bieber went on to be signed by Island Records. His debut release My World went platinum in the US, he was the first artist to have seven songs from a debut album chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Then he released the single Baby in January 2010 and things really blew up.

But what does this have to do with social media you may ask? Well Beiber currently has 4,556,617 followers on Twitter and there are over 200 profiles devoted to the 16-year-old. So, I think it’s fair to say he is doing something right and, it turns out, a few things wrong, all of which business owners can learn from.

I’m going to take a look at what he does and see how it can be applied to your business, so you too can be a teen heartthrob with millions of girls following your every word. Maybe not that, but at the very least, become a small business with a big presence.

Get the big guns involved:

For a middle-class teenage boy who is only 5 foot 2, Beiber has some pretty cool friends. Not just cool, but ones who are hugely influential in the social media world, such as Kanye West (who has only had a twitter account for a few weeks but has already racked up 689,562 followers.) Following and being followed by these big names of the Twitter world, can only be positive. Having someone with a huge amount of followers @ing you or retweeting your comments brings you to the attention of a much larger audience.
Although this may be easy to do if you are Justin Bieber, if you are not you can still get in there with profiles that relate to you and have a large following. Twitter is all about flattery, so flatter someone and make their ego and profile bigger. Even JB does it, just two days ago he tweeted ‘@kanyewest me, u, and the chef 2gether on a song = EPIC. haha. might sound crazy 2 u but even having this convo is living the dream. thanks’

Talk to the ’small people’

Although there has been plenty of stories saying Beiber is a brat, one thing can’t be denied – he makes a huge effort connecting with fans via Twitter, and there are a lot of fans. Instead of ignoring his crazed fans he will retweet their comments and engage them in conversation.
Beiber, or his management, knows that it is these people who buy his records, so it is them he looks after.
It has been said time and time again, but letting the customer know that you are not a faceless business is essential. A bit of time and effort will make them feel relaxed, trust you and be more likely to buy from you or use your service over someone that ignores them via Twitter or sends out generic messages.

Keep it relevant

This relates to the previous idea. It’s all very well having the followers, but to keep them you have to keep them interested. Beiber knows that the way to do this is to talk about the things they want to know, like his shows or where he currently is. He always directly addresses the people of that town and he will then thank them for their support.
Make sure your business profile isn’t talking rubbish. Before you hit tweet think about what you are saying, will anyone care? Will it make them want to be involved with you more? Always keep in the back of your mind that you are using twitter as a marketing tool, the idea is to get more custom from using it.

Don’t get twitter revenge

However angry you are do not seek Twitter revenge (Twengeance? Twit for Tat?), it not only makes you look immature but it shows you get hot headed in situations, a disaster for a business. People will be reluctant to work with you if you are seen to make rash or malicious decisions.
Just this week JB posted a teenage fan’s number on Twitter in revenge for having the fan having hacked the Twitter account of a friend of Beiber to get the star’s phone number. The boy, Kevin Kristopik, has consequently had to delete his Twitter page and change his mobile number after being inundated with calls.
Beiber, of course will not suffer greatly from his childish act, but if you are a small business you will. Word spreads like wild fire over the internet, so one mistake or one disgruntled text could marr your reputation beyond repair.

So what have we learnt from Justin Beiber? He’s not just a teen heart throb who can kind of hold a tune but he’s a social media, and especially Twitter, guru. Whether his fan base has grown since he joined the world of social media or his Twitter following is expanding as his fame escalates, is redundant because either way he has a huge following that isn’t going anywhere any time soon and that will continue to buy his music. And this is what all businesses want, loyal followers and a big Twitter following.

Not sure about you, but the Bing adverts have, as of late, become one of my most despised advertising campaigns. The endless noise and dubious message that any other search engine is going to give you unrelated results, and the implication that we’ve all seemingly got some kind of mental disorder where tangential conversation techniques are the only way to go.

Allow me to de-bunk this marketing campaign, if you will.

First off, take a look at these figures. These were released in July 2010 – before and during the “information overload” advert campaign, which is still   going. Yahoo’s share of the UK search engine market has fallen by a couple percent, leaving it third to Bing.

This all sounds hunky-dory until you consider that their combined market share is still equivalent to what it was before. Bing has consumed part of Yahoo’s slice of the online pie, but Google’s still got the same amount of pastry, crumbs and cherries in sauce it had a year ago. Dominance over the market second-comer is not an achievement, not when you’re supplying the search technology for your competitor and their market share was below 5% to begin with.

But the advert asks an interesting question: what has information overload done to us? This is a valid question, and one that it’s taken a Microsoft ad campaign to make us ask of ourselves. Personally, information overload now means I’m learning more than I was ten years ago in my spare time. It means I can research and reference in the space of a minute, and nothing is too complex now as sites covering a single subject help us to study along a gradient of complexity.

Google has, unfortunately for Microsoft’s Bing engine, sealed the market shut, and if in ten years it became the West’s only search engine I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. After all, it works well for what I need it to. Make sure you’re preferring UK results (especially when shopping), stick Safesearch to strict to filter out the waves of immaturity in Google Images, and you’re laughing.

But what if it didn’t work so well? The problem with a monopolistic market share in technology is that consumers tend to flail in panic, en masse, when something goes seriously wrong. Take the iPhone 4, for example. One moment it’s the Messiah, the next we’ve digitally lynch-mobbed Apple to the point that the man at the head of the operation “decided to leave”.

“Digital lynching” is an interesting phrase, and one a colleague coined recently. Apple’s Anntennagate martyr, and HP’s CEO are suffering from the same melodramatic backlash from the public – social media tirades. Twitter has become the new forum for slamming public figureheads, and trending and hash-tags allow this to happen. But are big jobs suffering for it? If Google’s Android system is successfully sued and the funding goes down the toilet, the OS with it, will Twitter turn on Oracle, or Google?

It brings me back to thinking about Bing. Is it a good thing? Do we need a wider choice? I’d say so. Google’s a fantastic search engine, but when one company gets a monopolistic hold on the market, almost no one holds a hand up and says “stop”. However, if it was to happen in government, there’d be protests on the streets.

Tyranny is no different in business, the only change is that your money’s going to Apple for your phone, Microsoft (or Apple again) for your computer and Oyster for your travel (if you’re in London), rather than paying your taxes to whichever party is currently dominating the ballot box. Are we now more subsceptible to marketing than we ever were? Is Bing just another pusher? What has information overload done to us?

Good Week for…

1. Small businesses:

Expert Nicola Clark from Marketing Magazine reveals that small businesses do have the social media advantage over larger companies. She said: “Small brands are at a massive advantage because they are not at risk of being a faceless brand.

“What I think a lot of big brands are trying to achieve through social media is to create a community where it doesn’t actually exist, whereas with smaller brands you genuinely do have that community – you do have that touch point.”

2. Doing the Rubik’s Cube:

After thirty years of trying to find the minimum number of moves needed to solve the Rubik’s Cube, it appears a solution may have been found.

A team used a bank of computers at Google to discover that the magic number is 20. The research found that 100,00 starting positions out of a staggering 43 billion billion can be solved in 20 moves or less. Hmmm, pretty sure we still won’t be able to do it.

3. Using Blackberry’s in Saudi Arabia:

It had been reported that the country was going to ban Blackberrys from 6 August, as they were unhappy that the handsets automatically scramble messages, which get sent to servers in Canada.

However Saudi Arabia’s telecommunications regulator has said it will continue to allow service for the time being, while they try and work out if they can put a Blackberry server in the UK.

4. Social media movies:

First The Social Network is directed by David Fincher starring Jessie Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake.

Now there’s Catfish, a low budget thriller with Facebook as a key plot element. It tells the story of two film-makers who document a film about one of their brothers who falls for a girl he meets over the internet. Catfish was an instant hit at Sundance and has had excellent reviews. Check out the trailer, it looks amazing, no?

5. Social Media itself:
Simply Zesty in Ireland shows that 85% of the UK is connected to the UK, and 25% write blogs, 65% read blogs and social networks are the largest activity on the web.

Bad Week for…

1. The boy who let his girlfriend be hit by a baseball:

In some ways this is good as he has become an internet sensation, but bad because it shows him clearly moving out of the way as the ball comes towards his girlfriend. The shame.

The video, at the time of writing, has racked up 83,120 views and there is even a Facebook page dedicated to him. The incident took place during a Major League Baseball game between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves, Astros Third Baseman Chris Johnson drove a foul ball in the direction of a couple sitting in left-field. The boyfriend, who is called Bo, saw the ball coming, allowing his girlfriend, Sarah, to get hit. Not only was the incident caught on camera, but he was interviewed afterwards and given the nickname ” Bo the Bailer”.

2. Mark Papermaster, the guy from antennagate:

Apple’s senior executive has been let go after the recent scandal involving the iPhone.

What’s got everyone talking is that apparently the problem with the antenna was known for years, way before Papermaster even joined Apple. He had only been working their for 16 months. So who is too blame, if anyone, is it the PR team handling the situation, the designers or Papermaster?

3. Newport State of Mind:

The spoof video Newport State of Mind, which became an instant internet hit, getting hundreds of thousands of views, has been removed from YouTube due to a copyright claim.

EMI say that permission should have been granted to use the same basics as the Jay Z and Alicia Key’s original Empire State of Mind.

4. Craigslist:

The popular online classified advertising site is facing accusations that the ‘adult services’ section is in fact a breeding ground for under-age prostitution. Two young women placed an advertisement in the Washington Post saying they were repeatedly sold through the site to men who ‘paid to rape’ them.

Craigslists has come under fire before for charging $10 for adult services ads, whereas other sites do so for free.

5. iPad:

It looks like the Dell Streak, which is a 5 inch tablet device, is going to cost a lot less than the iPad.

Launching August 12, it will cost $299.99 with a two-year AT&T contract, and $549.99 for an unlocked edition, that is less than half the price of the iPad 3G.

It is however smaller than the iPad and is in some ways just a glorified smartphone. What do you think, should Apple be worried?

It seems like such a ridiculous goal, doesn’t it? To make an incredible amount of money from something as simple as a blog about, say, writing white papers, or about social media. But there are a few who blog and rake in an impressive revenue each year, and one of those few is Michael Stelzner.

Reading the incredible account of his meteoric rise to internet fame and economical success via the blogging medium, it got me thinking. Why aren’t we all doing this? I’m a copy-writer, and I’ve written millions of words relating to every subject you can think of over the few years during and after university.

But it takes social media knowledge to drive traffic in. People aren’t going to bother visiting a site unless one or both of the following two conditions are met: a word-of-mouth recommendation, or a larger online social media campaign. But how do we achieve these two goals? Social media, social media and social media.

Firstly, if you’re aiming to grow your fan-base with a loyal cult following, then the foremost thing to consider when attempting to start it off in the first place is your network of colleagues and friends. Everyone knows that when a colleague or a friend makes a new website, you’ll all visit, have a poke around. Some will even return regularly, provided it’s interesting and updated often.

However, that’s only a few, and you’re going to have to work hard. No one enjoys having a friend push their blog at them purely for the sake of the site’s hit-counter. But people do like the odd nudge in the right online direction by someone who knows someone who’s writing some really funny, smart stuff on a daily basis.

However, if you’d like to take the more formal route, or you’re a solitary warrior writhing in existential agony and feeling like you’re one of the army of unread bloggers , then you’re going to have to consider social media as your best, and only option. In this day and age, newsletters are not read like they used to be, and we’re probably not going to visit another news site by seeing an advert for it on the one we’re already reading.

However, we might just have a quick peek if the site turns up on somebody’s Twitter account, or regularly forms a part of someone’s Facebook profile. Of course, when they visit and enjoy your content, there’s the small chance of the gold-dust re-tweet, and once that happens it tends to spread like wildfire through people with similar interests.

Take last week, for example – I had someone spontaneously find this article, read it, and tweet about it. I don’t know them personally, and two of their followers re-tweeted the link to this article. There was no prompting, no request at the end of my blog asking those who enjoyed my work to talk about it: it was free advertising for writing someone enjoyed.

These kinds of digital thumbs-ups are important, because eventually you’ll find your way onto the “must read” list of someone big, and that list often now finds its way onto the web. When I first started to write for a publication called Resolution Magazine, I wrote a long screed about the simulation of cultural identity. It was something I’m proud of to this day, but not half as proud of that as what happened to it.

Kieron Gillen, founder of New Games Journalism and arguably one of the best in his field, included it in his Sunday Papers post that listed his favourite bits of writing during the week. To be endorsed by such a major face had a serious impact on my confidence and the success of the article, and the fact that we got a fair amount of traffic simply by repeatedly turning up in his list.

It’s not impossible to become the blog to end all blogs – you’ve just got to utilise the same method that started political revolutions, the Renaissance, and Twitter – word of mouth. If one person says your site is fantastic to a room of ten people, and they in turn do the same, in a day’s time you’ll have 100 more unique visits. Things multiply if you keep the quality up, so do so, and thrive.

Not too long ago, I stated that LinkedIn wasn’t as popular as Facebook. I’ll be honest, I thought it would get sucked into the heaving morass of social media that is Facebook a la The Blob in the not-too-distant future. But seemingly, Mashable’s ever-impressive documentation of statistics has proved me wrong.

Nope, that figure isn’t false. Two billion dollars. Admittedly, it doesn’t hold a candle to the ridiculous worth of Facebook, but it’s an impressive display of what happens when you create a social networking site that focuses on the business side of things.

Far too many people are getting caught out doing silly things at parties via Facebook, but their LinkedIn profiles? Immaculate. Neat CV structure, experience, formal and (sometimes) well-worded recommendations from ex-colleagues or clients go a long way to improving someone’s online image.

We like the attitude of sites like LinkedIn. It’s a site that really devotes itself to providing as much information for every industry possible within its expansive networking system, and its this system that proves to be so popular.

It’s rather like networking at an industry event – you know the PR, and you know a few fellow journalists, who in turn, may know bigger journalists, who know or may even be related to the big people at the top of the corporate food chain. Now, hassling your way through endless degrees of separation at a cocktail party or a product launch can be mentally exhausting.

However, do it on LinkedIn and it’s simply seen as a normal, everyday activity. You’d be shocked to see who you can link to through the LinkedIn’s connection system, and getting your contacts to introduce you (via a simple series of clicks) is an incredibly powerful business tool.

It’s also a fantastic forum for people who work freelance or contract to discuss challenges they may be having at work in an environment where it makes them look productive, rather than simply incompetent. I’m a member of a few writing groups, and I have the writing questions section up on my welcome page. I’ve seen authors, copywriters and marketing veterans write long screeds out of the kindness of their hearts, and it’s fantastic to see a personal favourite author of yours take up someone’s question and run with it.

It’s not about friendship, sadly, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be. Although the LinkedIn ‘adding connections’ system does indeed seem to be geared towards business – asking you if you worked with/for/alongside/above them or if you’re simply an ‘other’, certainly it isn’t openly telling you to get all your mates to listen the second you’re done posing for your display picture. But make use of linking yourself to your friends and justifying it to the system, and you’ll soon realise that Barry at the pub actually works in a similar industry to you, and that PR bloke you’ve been hunting for months is actually one of his work colleagues.

It’s a great platform to promote a business from, and being able to both apply for and post jobs on its impressive employment section effectively turns it into a combination of business newspaper, job site and business network. It doesn’t mess about – your employment history and recommendations requirements (though optional, are encouraged though the use of phrases like “one more recommendation and your profile will be 100% complete!) really do make sure you know why you’re logged in here – to work, and to liaise.

It’s a different kind of Facebook. The galleries may be gone, and everyone’s a little less relaxed, but the politics, networking and digging through people’s history is essentially the same. Having the CV of a personal favourite author or copywriter at your fingertips is gold, and being able to see how the CEO of a company you want to emulate got to where he was is always going to trump “liking” that photo of his yacht.

(Note: those looking for my personal LinkedIn can find it here.)

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last week, you are sure to have heard about the Raoul Moat vs the police story that has dominated the news.

As one of Britain’s biggest ever manhunts, the story was of course going get a lot of press time. When the situation came to a close on Saturday and Moat turned the gun on himself, what nobody expected was the subsequent public reaction.

What emerged was a Facebook fan page called “RIP Raoul Moat, You Legend”, which sent shock waves through the media, caused disgust from the public and finally being discussed by the PM in Parliament.

David Cameron speaking at the House of Commons on Wednesday said: “It is absolutely clear that Raoul Moat was a callous murderer, full stop, end of story. I cannot understand any wave, however small, of public sympathy for this man.”

Unfortunately Mr Prime Minister, although this may be your opinion and that of the Daily Mail, it is not that of the 36,000 members who joined the group or indeed the opinion of Facebook.

A statement was released by Facebook saying: “We have 26-million people on Facebook in the UK, each of which has their own opinion, and they are entitled to express their views on Facebook as long as their comments do not violate our terms.”

However, according to the Conservative lawmaker Chris Heaton-Harris, it does violate their terms:
“We don’t want to set laws on Facebook at all, but we do want people who are hosting these sites and other pages to have some responsibility,” Heaton-Harris told BBC radio.

“What I would say to Facebook is that within its terms and conditions on this site, that its incitement goes against its terms and conditions.”

The reaction against the Facebook group has been fierce with a number of groups being set up asking for the page to be removed.

Today when searching for the group, it appears that it no longer exists. However there is a R.I.P Raoul Moat! group, which currently has 9,371 people who ‘like’ it.

The group says: R.I.P Raoul Moat! You were a loving father and an all round canny lad and No haters or you get removed from group. There is also a link to a website www.raoulmoat.com

What is interesting about the Wall of comments, is that probably more than half of them are against the group. And if you look at the other comments, a lot are idiotic such as “How can a ginger be a leg-end?”, others are from those who are expressing dissatisfaction at the police and the government. But a large number of them are saying that they understand what he did in the last week was wrong, but they feel sorry for him for one reason or another, including that he was let down by society, the mental health system, his family etc.

It’s not just the people leaving comments on the group who feel sympathy for him, in a Guardian blog Michael White admits to feeling ” have a twinge of sympathy for Raoul Moat the other day. Two, actually, though I didn’t post them on Facebook.”

He went on to say: “Clearly Moat was dangerous and had to be captured – one murder and two life-threatening attacks, one of which cost PC David Rathband his sight – but the scale and media-frenzied tone of the police hunt made me uncomfortable.

Then there was that 47-page letter he wrote, the one the newspapers printed at length. No father that he knew of, at odds with his mother, estranged from his kids and the girlfriend he had abused but decided was the one for him, it was a mess.”

The point that Michael White may be making is that it is OK to feel sympathy for Moat, but it is an entirely different matter to talk about it so openly.

This message appeared today from the admin of the group R.I.P Raoul Moat:
“A MESSAGE TO ALL HATERS AND ALL OTHERS WHO DO NOT LIKE THE IDEA OF THIS PAGE, INCLUDING THE GOVERNMENT. WE WILL NOT BE CLOSING THIS PAGE DOWN AS IT IS THE INTENTIONS OF THE ADMIN TO LET PEOPLE PAY THEIR RESPECTS. WE DO NOT CONDONE WHAT RAOUL DID ON THAT WEEK BUT YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER HE HAD A LIFE BEFORE THIS AND THAT IS WHY PEOPLE ARE PEACEFULLLY TRYING TO PAY THEIR RESPECTS…”

As Facebook themselves say, people should be able to express themselves, but realistically how far can this go? Would it be acceptable for a ‘Hitler – You Legend’ page? Clearly the crimes of Moat are not comparable to Hitler, but murder is murder and the glorification of it is surely unacceptable in our society?

Although the page now appears to have disappeared, the issue has divide the country, the story has become a vehicle for a variety of grievances felt by government and police haters and on the flip side a lever by those after tighter Facebook rules.

Where do you think Facebook should draw the line?

Facebook, subject of many an endless morning spent looking at galleries of pictures, tagging, commenting, and playing Mafia Wars. It seems like such a wasteful activity, until you count in marketing data, film promotions, band fan groups, political groups and the hundreds of thousands of uses it seems to be developing with each day.

In June, the site hit over 141 million unique visits in the US. So, in one month, the site’s visitors were over twice the amount of people living in the UK, that’s nearly half the population of the United States. It’s a huge figure and demonstrates how large and far-reaching the networking site has become.

But people are no longer simply creating holiday galleries and messaging and commenting about each other, as they were in its infancy. The ever-increasing list of Facebook features available to all users from the moment of registration is getting longer all the time, and this has opened the door to businesses who have finally recognised that the Facebook picture of their drunk CEO is going to matter.

Have you ever seen someone get caught out via Facebook? Everyone who’s aware of the social media industry has likely heard at least one dark tale of the consequences of careless social networking. Lost jobs, lost boy/girlfriends, broken marriages, legal suits. Privacy on the web is now at a premium, and with the average net-user racking up an increasing amount of social media and communications accounts, it’s becoming harder for businesses to keep track of the reputation of individual employees.

If you’re a company that deals in products or services that would encourage people to find you via the web, think about what else they might be finding. Your PR rep with the public gallery of his drunken week in Bangkok is suddenly going to look a lot less competent when another company is sizing you up for a merger.

But what to do? We can’t ban these people from Facebook or make them go private. If anything, social networking has become such an integral part of modern online PR that doing so would seriously cripple your online presence as a company. However, setting account privacy settings or moving certain photos into an area unlikely to be seen by a business is a wise idea.

Sure, when you’re dealing with a new company, you Google them. Of course, when you’re dealing with an individual, their social networking profiles will come up (and it may interest some to know that Facebook actually received higher traffic than Google in May) alongside their company profiles. LinkedIn contains very few risks – for all its “cool office-worker” image, it’s an online CV with few social interaction capabilities.

However, that MySpace account you had when you were fourteen – you know the one, “Bio: I hate PR!!! lol!!” – may haunt you when you’re looking into working for Saatchi & Saatchi. Think about your online presence, and, even better, pre-empt the haters. Set up fan groups for your company, but be open about it – the last PR disaster you need is to be seen secretly making yourselves look popular. Why not offer your clients a social space to meet and talk, to recommend you and link to you in their comments and status updates?

Offering them a way to interact via a medium that could, in ten years, become our main source of communication, is wise. Embrace the new if you want to stay on top of your target market, and get interested in their interests. If they’re “liking”, wasting hours on Farmville and posting pictures from the office drinks night, then consider whether your CEO might want to mention his love of pixelated pigs on his profile.