Year: 2016

The world’s defacto professional B2B social network LinkedIn has changed the landscape of business networking, and with the recent buyout by Microsoft, is only likely to grow in influence and be added more and more to our daily life. I am going to be honest here and say I like some of LinkedIn and I hate other aspects of it. I think Microsoft could really help make the platform better by spending a bit of time on reducing the spammy nature of it. That said, those who are not using the platform for their business relationships are likely missing out on opportunity ... Read more

Those of you that read my blog regularly will know occasionally I decide to write a review or two but it’s only when someone inspires me to do so or I get a freebie for my honest opinion. Recently, I have been so busy with the growth of Prohibition I haven’t had much time to write about my experiences but this I thought was worth the extra time investment. This is the former not the latter, last weekend my wife and I decided to leave the kids back at home and take a trip to the lakes to celebrate our ... Read more

As of April 2016, Instagram had around 400 million users worldwide and is one of the fastest growing social networks. It is based solely on image and video content uploads, of which there are more than 80 million posted every day. A popular social media platform for both users and brands, so it’s hardly surprising that Instagram has just announced it plans to launch business friendly tools that provide insights into engaging posts and audience. If I am honest it is a bit late, I have been moaning for a number of years that it’s platform needed to be better ... Read more

Following on from our recent big CIPR award wins late last year. Yesterday a few of us gathered over in Manchester for the Prolific North Awards which were attended by more than 800 digital, creative and PR types and some of the best agencies in the North of the UK. If I am honest we were delighted to be shortlisted for “Best Small PR Agency” and then just as we were settling in we only went and bloody won. I was pretty stunned, and had to make a rambling speech, which is a first for me at awards, I didn’t ... Read more

I could spend hours trawling through various interior and style blogs and Pinterest, looking for inspiration and mentally planning what my future house will look like. So, I’ve compiled a list of the top 25 interior blogs – hoping that each one will give you some kind of inspiration and ideas. 1. Moregeous Written by Sian whose talents and knowledge include property renovating, self-building, interior designing, and TV presenting (to name a few). Moregeous is an informative and fun read, bringing design inspiration, the latest trends, practical advice and various musings. Sian has been nicknamed as a ‘lady builder’ which ... Read more

An article written in the Guardian this week has reported that Google is claiming YouTube advertisements are much more effective than those on traditional television. In fact, it goes further by claiming in 80% of cases, adverts on the video platform are actually better at driving sales. This report does seem to be very self-serving for Google, to simply sell more advertising. I mean seriously? Of course, it highlights that YouTube is better  – it is written for them. It uses results from a report, by Matt Brittin, Google’s top-ranked European Executive, stating that in a campaign analysing advertisements across ... Read more

I have had a busy few months already in 2016, the year has started well for the Prohibition team and I have been up and down the country in meetings with exciting brands advising on social media strategy. I personally felt like I should have written a bit more on here recently, but frankly I haven’t had the time, as running a 10-strong PR agency and being a lecturer at University is quite time consuming especially if I want an actual life. However, a couple of days ago I was contacted by Vuelio and told this blog has been listed ... Read more

I came across this clip on YouTube on a brilliant social media campaign by Audi in Sweden. The campaign was created to highlight the the power of its quattro four-wheel drive system. The team created a competition where they challenged Instagram users to capture the most unexplored place in Sweden, where the closest Instagram photo is miles away. The campaign used the hashtag #CatchTheUnseen and utilised its Twitter channel @AudiSweden. It reached more than 500,000 Instagram users and targeted influencers on the platform. The prize for the winner of the competition was a brand new Q7 which is a very ... Read more

Here is a nice PR stunt from Heineken – I love this, a great bit of content just to get you talking about football and beer. But what would you have done?

Monday marks the 10th anniversary of the first tweet ever to have been sent on the platform Twitter – see below. just setting up my twttr — Jack (@jack) 21 March 2006 Much has been written about Twitter in recent times, In quarter 4 2015, Twitter mentioned that the decline in active users came from both seasonality and its decision to reduce the volume of mail sent to dormant users to bring them back to the service. According to Twitter, the decline in active users was offset by the marketing spending in Q4. Basically, usage is declining and it has ... Read more