Highlights include:

To support the web video case study, LGE also asked us to produce an audio podcast that features in-depth interviews with key members of the Croydon team, who outline in detail their process and recommendations for others about to embark on a similar programme – you can listen to the 25 minute podcast here.

I’m a big fan of brands promoting their social media profiles offline and spotted an excellent example this week when unpacking the family ‘big shop’ (thank you Peter Kay)!

The brand I’m applauding is Yorkshire Tea – who produce my favourite decaf tea bags. As you can see in the photo below, once I opened  the box and lifted the lid, my eyes were met by a clear call to action to link up with Yorkshire Tea on Facebook – which I subsequently did!

I think Yorkshire Tea did a number of things right here:

• They picked a smart place on the packaging to promote their Facebook page – there was no way I was going to miss this message when I opened the box – and to me it almost has more impact because I wasn’t expecting it – which wouldn’t have been the case if they had just printed it on the outside of the packaging
• They also used the magic combination of 1. A clear call to action (Come and see what’s brewing on) 2. The correct Facebook logo (according to Facebook’s brand usage guidelines) and 3. An easy to find brand page name www.facebook.com/yorkshiretea

Nicely done Yorkshire Tea team – I’m off for a cuppa!

So the last couple of weeks have been pretty manic from a Facebook perspective – numerous updates across the platform including the big news about the all new Facebook ‘Timeline’ replacing the current profile layout.

The new timeline is due to be rolled out across accounts from 04th October 2011 – but if you’re super keen and want to upgrade to the new timeline now, you can – it’s pretty straightforward and this great video walks you through how to do it.

I did it a couple of days ago, my initial reaction to the new timeline is really positive, I’m a big fan of chronology as a way of organising things anyway, so this layout really feels comfortable for me – it’ll be interesting to see how it goes down with other Facebook users, maybe it’ll even encourage some people to switch to Google+ which is now open to all.

What do you think about the new Facebook timeline?

We published our latest web video last week for long term client The PPMA (Public Sector People Managers’ Association).

The online video (see below – running time 4 minutes 30 seconds) features a ‘talking heads’ style interview with current PPMA President Anne Gibson, who outlines her thoughts on the key issues facing the Association and its members over next 18 months and she also comments on how public sector cuts are affecting capability within organisations and what the future impact will be.

We managed the entire production process of the web video including planning, filming, editing, encoding and uploading of the final film to the PPMA’s new website, YouTube channel, Facebook page and Twitter account.

The aim of the video is threefold, firstly to bring the current president’s agenda to life and introduce her to the wider HR community, secondly to engage PPMA’s online community across both it’s main website and social channels and thirdly to improve their new website’s SEO – video is a great tool for achieving this according to leading global research company Forrester, who in 2010 identified that a website with a video is 53 times more likely to come up on a first page result on Google than the exact same page without video - sobering stuff!

I saw this great video earlier this week – not only is the message powerful, but it’s really cleverly done. Hope you like it too!

Apple is planning to include face detection capabilities in the next version of its smartphone/tablet platform, iOS 5, 9to5Mac has discovered.

It is too early to tell exactly how the face recognition in iOS 5 will work, but it appears Apple plans to open it up to developers via several API controls, including a call for recognizing the position of the person’s eyes and mouth. This means that in the future we’ll be seeing iOS apps utilizing face detection from third-party developers and possibly from Apple itself.

The technology behind this feature probably comes from Polar Rose, a Swedish face recognition company, which Apple acquired in 2010.

Check out this video showcasing an augmented reality app called Recognizr, which Polar Rose co-developed.

Source: Mashable

Facebook has announced a partnership with Skype to add video chat to the social networking site. The move is likely to be seen as a shot across the bow of Google, which recently launched a Facebook rival, Google+, also featuring video calling.

This is not the first time Facebook and Skype have teamed up – they already share some instant messaging tools. Skype is in the process of being bought by Microsoft, which is a major shareholder in Facebook.

The new video-call service was launched by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who also revealed that the site now had more than 750 million users. However, he said that the total number of active users was no longer a useful measure of the site’s success.

Instead, the amount of sharing – of photographs, videos and web links – was a better indication of how people engaged with the site, explained Mr Zuckerberg.

At launch, Facebook’s video chat service will only be able to connect two users face-to-face, whereas Google’s system allows group video calls, known as Hangouts. Mark Zuckerberg said that it was likely that other “premium” Skype functions would be added in future.

He also appeared to offer a back-handed compliment to Google+, saying that its creation was a vindication of Facebook’s vision for the social web. Industry analysts welcomed the announcement.

“Advertisers love anything that keeps users on Facebook for longer and that is something Facebook has been brilliant at – keeping people engaged with the platform for increasingly longer periods of time,” Susan Etlinger of the Altimeter Group told BBC News.

“It stands to reason that the longer you are on Facebook, the happier advertisers will be.”

In California, Skype chief executive Tony Bates welcomed the partnership, calling it a “long-term relationship” that could benefit both companies. At one point he had to correct Mr Zuckerberg on the subject of Skype’s ownership, reminding him that the Microsoft deal was not yet complete and still had to be cleared by regulators.

The tie-in was announced a week after Google announced its own social networking service, Google+.

“The two companies built these products separately and independently over a number of months but they will be compared directly,” said Ben Parr, editor-at-large of social media blog Mashable.com.

“They are going to be in more heated competition in the next year or so and you are going to hear a lot about who is going to win the social networking war – how does Google catch up, how does Facebook respond. This story isn’t going away.”

Source: BBC News

One of the most common conversations we have with clients is about how to grow an online community around their brand – particularly how to increase the number of people that ‘Like’ their Facebook page and ‘Follow’ them on Twitter.

There are lots of elements to successfully achieving growth, particularly around creating engaging content and frequency/quality of interaction, that could (and will no doubt) make up a dozen future blog posts…but, there are also the simple, common sense things that every business should be doing to build awareness amongst existing and potential customers of the opportunity to connect with their brand online.

We refer to it as making the most of your customer ‘touch points’ – wherever you interact with your customer either in person or online, let them know where and how they can connect with you.

So, promote your Facebook page and Twitter profile online and offline, internally and externally – embed Facebook and Twitter boxes on your website, add ‘Like us on Facebook’ call to actions on email signatures, business cards, stationery, packaging, external marketing collateral e.g. posters, press ads, TV commercials (seeing so many more of those coming through), on in-store point of sale and even vehicles.

Talking of which, one of our clients, Holland’s Pies have this week added Facebook and Twitter logos (along with their profile names Holland’s Pies Official and @HollandsPies) to their iconic fleet of green pie vans.

It’s a simple and relatively inexpensive thing to do, but makes really smart marketing sense since Holland’s 30+ pie vans are cris-crossing the North West (their core customer territory) on a daily basis and receive thousands of customer ‘eyeballs’ (OTS to you marketing types) that can potentially be converted into online fans of the brand.

When advising them to do this, one thing we stressed was the importance of adhering to both Facebook and Twitter’s brand usage rules. Luckily, both sites have very good, easy to follow guidelines and areas where you can download official logo’s that can be used both online and offline. You’ll find Facebook’s guidelines here and Twitter’s here.

What other ‘touch points’ are you using to promote and grow online communities?