Useful Social Media - Corporate Social Media Best Practice

Morning Everyone,

See below for our weekly round up of the latest goings on in the world of corporate social media. Check out the growing trend for merging the virtual world with the real world and getting customers active for results and rewards. As always if you have anything to add which could be of use to our readers or you think we should be highlighting let us know!

Virgin America Twitter Scavenge

Here’s a nice little case study on Virgin America and their use of social media. This is a company which has always been a good one to watch, using a steady stream of creative online tactics to leverage both customer engagement and marketing opportunities. Read here to learn how they got creative on their fourth anniversary by combining baseball, mobiles, Twitter and bearded flight attendants..oh yes.

Freelancing – bad clients?

For all you entrepreneurs and solo flyers out there, this article caught our eye. Nellie Akalp, CEO of CorpNet.com gives us a few pointers on how to navigate awkward clients when you are your own boss. Social Media campaigns often involve going out on a limb to activate a creative idea. The work may be with high profile brands that seek to engage with large numbers of people in a highly visible way. Also highly probable is that the person commissioning may not be completely up to speed with social media themselves. So how do you manage your time, their expectations, handle payment and avoid conflict? Nellie Akalp has the answers.

LivingSocial taxi experiment

So, you are in a taxi on the way to your next appointment and suddenly disco lights start flashing and an on board screen starts asking you if fancy taking part in spagetti making lesson or driving a formula one car.  This is the cool new concept from deals site LivingSocial who want to showcase all the discounted activities available on their site and figured unsuspecting cab fares would be a good audience. Watch the video to see how it works. Sounds great, unless you actually need to get to your original destination of course…

Mobile gaming infographics

If you weren’t quite sure how massive mobile gaming has become, look no further to be brought up to speed. Digital buzz have brought the fantastic infographics of Geekaphone to our attention and the results really are fascinating. From serious number crunching; ‘The mobile gaming industry is predicted to reach $54 Billion by 2015‘, to the slightly depressing ‘Angry Birds has been downloaded 140 million times’. Looking to the future, will gaming determine which mobile devices advance and which fall behind? Blackberry users don’t game as much as Iphone, but Android is about to overtake the mighty Apple in the number of total available apps. Enjoy!

Food Truck Phenomenon

We wrote a while ago about the growing popularity of Food Trucks in the US and here they are again popping up on our radar. These mobile restaurant kitchens seem to be going from strength to strength in terms of the customer popularity they have experienced and the great online marketing opportunities they can harness. See here for some nice infographics charting the rise of the lowly food truck in the US. Is the UK next for catering on the move?

9 ways to Measure the (Actual) Success of your Social Media Community

Heard of SAP Community? No? Well now you have. We love this blog post alerting us to the steady rise of this business social network. Older than both Facebook and Link’dIn and now with 2.5 million members it is a ‘collaborative community for business sharing practices’. We like. Before you join and get involved see here to learn the tips of Community Operations manager Chip Rodgers on ’9 ways to know if your community is any good or not’.