DO mirror your brand voice if you have a strong one, if you don’t – create one!

For example: Mamas & Papa’s brand focus is quality, style and attention to detail as well as customer service, so their tweets reflects this.

Twitter accounts that don’t mirror their brand’s focus or have distinct ‘voice’ – including those from the biggest brands, quickly become background noise.

DO use tweetdeck, hootsuite or any other software to plan your tweets in advance.

DO keep your disgruntled consumers happy by responding to consumer queries and mentions as promptly and helpfully as possible.

DO hold follower ‘drives’. If you have a strong presence elsewhere online e.g. on your blog or Facebook but are yet to receive the solid follower base you need on Twitter, don’t be afraid to ask.

Make like Boohoo.com and pull thousands of Facebook followers and website users to their Twitter by offering the chance to win £50 of vouchers just by clicking ‘Follow’. It worked, big time.

DON’T  use inappropriate levels of hash tags in the right places e.g. ‘we’re really #excited to see the new #twitterdesigns come out #tomorrow’, has far more tags than necessary (trust me, we do see it!)

DON’T join trending topics that aren’t relevant to your brandvoice or content plan. Followers of B&Q don’t want to hear about Beyoncé and Jay Z’s new baby, just as Beyonce followers don’t want to hear about the Bathroom Door sale at B&Q

DON’T tweet more than five times a day (max!) if you can help it. Excluding responses to consumer questions and mentions – which are unlimited, too many tweets will fill up your followers feed. It’s bad Twitter manners, convolutes your messages and is creates an information-overload (inevitably leading to consumers ‘switching off’)

eight&four’s geek-chics Kate & Amy invited to talk digital at ‘Salon Smart’!

Salon Smart is an exclusive business-networking event for Salon Owners, hair product and brand owners – and anyone who’s anyone in the hair industry!

We’re very excited to announce that our founders have been invited to speak at the next big event in April. Kate and Amy will be talking about what’s going to be huge in digital this year and how it will transform the way the hair industry market themselves.

Look out for updates in April on what they talked about and how it went and for now visit the salon smart website or their facebook for more info.

The year of Mobile

Mobile has made huge progress this year, with the introduction of Siri, mobile advertising and mobile sites on the rise and dramatic steps forward with mobile payments – the progress isn’t going to stop in 2012.

• gesture recognition has already worked it’s way into gaming stations such as Kinect and Xbox, but 2012 could be the year for gesture-based mobile phone control to really take hold! Nokia have been submitting patents for touch-free navigation since 2008 – and the technology has finally caught up. We’re thinking hand gestures will be the first step – but there are many rumours about eye-controlled screens.

• Google Mobile Wallet already has many thousands of merchants accepting their NFC (Near Field Communication) technology. As is expected, the whole industry will follow! A key social advancement this year will be much of the world accepting this technological advancement into their lives and payments using your mobile phone becoming the norm!

 Gamification

“The scale of the audience accessible through gaming is simply staggering. In terms of potential reach, it rivals television as a medium“ Adam Klienberg

Gamification has had a bit of a tough start, with many not recognising the relevance to Marketing, and treating it as a fad. If indeed it is a fad, then it will be the fad of 2012 amongst marketeers attempting to engage their audiences online.

Gamification isn’t games, it’s about applying game based thinking to your brand, business or organisation. Game play itself stimulates the human brain and releases dopamine, and these proven mechanics can be brought into marketing – especially mobile marketing. Games are about pleasure, and pleasure is the new marketing – one dimension that Gabe Zicherman (runs the gamification summit) argues is extremely powerful.

So if it isn’t games, what is it then? Gabe Zicherman describes it as “using game thinking and mechanics to engage an audience and solve problems”. We define it simply as applying a gaming mentality to consumer lifestyle, via the brand.

For examples of gamification in action, visit http://mashable.com/2011/07/18/gamification-marketing/#206073-Ribbon-Hero

Google+

Whilst facebook continues to dominate social media, there has been a great deal of backlash on the most recent design upgrade – ‘Timeline’. Although this will unlikely cause a huge number of people packing up their facebook life and moving on, there is talk that Google+ will benefit from all of these disgruntled users that ‘still want to be active on a social media platform they are comfortable with (Marketing Week).

Google+ has been fairly quiet since it’s recent launch, seemingly just gradually gathering users and calmly existing. However, with the recent addition of brand pages, and further features plus mass scale integration on the horizon, Google+ is set to be intimidatingly huge this year.

As Marketing Week worded it:

“Just as it is so important for brands to be visible on Apple’s platforms, next year marketers would be wise to ensure they are part of every feature of Google’s increasingly walled garden too.”

Video marketing

Video marketing is certainly not new for 2012, but did you know that youtube is the second largest search engine in the world? This year marketeers will be seriously upping their video marketing game.

Youtube shared content appears to be mostly music, however, the virals frequently come from brands, organisations and businesses. Don’t get us wrong though – you can’t create a viral, a viral just happens. You can however, create video content that stands out, is relevant and engaging enough to help drive favourability and conversion… and just maybe go viral

For B2B brands, creativity still applies. Try not to be too corporate, invest in something different and be creative to see real results.

Smart TV

The digital switch over is predicted to prompt a surge of sales of the Smart TV.  Smart TV is a whole new platform for Social Media, meaning that veiwers can share and comment on media content via Facebook and Twitter.

Whilst only 10 marketers had Smart TV strategy as of October 2011 – other agencies will have to jump on the band wagon very quickly as the Smart TV offers the opportunity for brands to create their own apps and appear on homescreens.

Digital > Direct

It’s Digital Marketing’s time to shine this year. The real importance of digital has been quite quickly picked up by larger corporations, but the focus (and the budget!) for larger corporations has still been very much on direct marketing.

Whilst Digital Marketing’s much older and more established counterpart – direct marketing, can’t be discounted completely (by any means!), digital has become both a more established marketing option, and it now seems that 2012 will be the year for investing in digital. Investment well spent, we say!

NORAD have made it possible for children (and adults!) to track Father Christmas as he delivers presents all over the world. The amazing project is in it’s second year, and although the website (http://www.noradsanta.org/en/) is already actively counting down the days, minutes, hours and seconds as well as games and videos, the real fun begins on Christmas Eve. From 2AM on December 24th anyone can type [santa] into Google Maps and literally track him ‘live’ as he completes his delivery.

An amazing combination of creativity and technology, we are loving the NORAD Santa Tracker!

Have a very Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year from the Eight&Four team!

The program, which goes live today, offers those who are dealing with anything from stress to contemplating suicide. As an example, if a user writes a status update referencing depression or suicide, a friend can report it to Facebook, and the author of the comment will get sent an email containing a telephone support number or a live chat option.

It’s quite a step up from Google’s recent addition of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline telephone number to the top of searches relating to suicide and whilst we’re not sure how effective it will be, we’re all rooting for it to work!

Well done, Facebook!

The image above shows that on Facebook it is the Profile picture and the top comment on the page that are the main focus of visitors. It is interesting to note that only the first few words of comments are looked at for the most part, and useful for those choosing to advertise through Facebook, it’s brilliant to see that the eyes do wander to the advertisements. Make those profile pictures bright and memorable, and those comments engaging to make an instant impact on your followers and viewers.

We’re looking for a super talented Web Designer who is able to work with WordPress and is passionate about all things digital! The start date is mid January 2012, so if you think you could be a brilliant new addition to the eight&four team then take a look at the Job Spec right away and get in touch if this sounds like you.

Good Luck!

On the back of this, earlier this year Kate & Amy were invited to be Judges at The Most Wanted Awards 2011 – one of the hairdressing industry’s largest Awards ceremonies.

Last night was the Grand Finale at Lawrence Hall, and Kate and Amy attended a fantastic ceremony where the winners were announced amongst fountains of prosecco, mountains of canapes, and  a lot of inappropriate humour from Keith Lemon….

It was a great night – and big congrats from everyone at eight&four to all the worthy winners! And everyone who wasn’t shortlisted for Best Online Salon? You know who you should be talking to – 0203 195 2034…. Ask for Kate….

Check Kate out on the VT at the Awards last night below!