One of the core features of Facebook is the ability to “check-in” to a location or post photos with the location added (geo-tagged) automatically. On the user’s timeline, check-ins and photos with a geo-tag are mapped automatically, and other photos can be manually added. Status updates from a mobile also show a location unless the user decides to turn this feature off. Adding locations is also now part of “normal” Facebook, too.

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Social media moves at quite a pace. This line is constantly reeled off over and over again, but it’s worth reiterating because it moves at such a pace it catches even the most savvy of generations off guard.

Social media started out as a fad for the kids. If you’re between the ages of 25-30 you’ll have started your social media career when you were a student. If you’re younger, you’ll have been involved far longer.

This post is about understanding your personal brand and how you, as a person, are becoming a touch point in business and how your social spaces are affecting decisions people make about you.

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The most surprising thing about Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, announced over the Easter weekend, is that it’s not really that surprising at all. Not even *winces* the $1 billion price tag…

Why? Well Instagram may not have had a clear revenue strategy in place but that often (if at all) tends to come much later in the development of critical-mass social networking platforms. First comes people. And people means eyeballs.
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 By Doug Sheard

The affiliate model used to fear phones. A natural concern over the leakage, caused by a merchant having a number on-site meant that many networks instigated a knee-jerk reaction – hide it with a click append. If a merchant did embrace the concept of phone tracking, this was not always accurate, leading in some cases to affiliates receiving sporadic commissions based loosely on their number of clicks. I remember hearing about one programme that offered commission to the top affiliates based on the percentage of clicks driven!

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By Duncan Parry

 Building an agency from scratch means reviewing piles of CVs and spending a lot of hours interviewing – especially in an industry where competition for staff is fierce at all levels. I’ve been in a few really good interviews where I’ve wanted to hire the person there and then, many mediocre ones – and a few so terrible I’d rather forget. Here are my tips (and some of my frustrations laid bare).

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 By Kate Bath

I will freely admit that being part of the display team at an agency is no easy feat. First and foremost is the client, which is a given, and generally speaking we are kept pretty busy driving their digital business forward. So unfortunately one of the last things in our day (not always the case but often is) are media owners; and especially unknown media owners.

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By Adrian Goodsell

I’m a big fan of Paul Adams (@padday).

He’s probably best known as the guy who laid the foundations for Google+ then upped and left before Circles launched to work on Facebook’s advertising platform. I’ve been following his blog for some time now and I’m usually given lots of food for thought by his posts. [Read more →]

By John Barham

At STEAK we are asked many things by prospective clients as they try to gauge who we are, how we work and ultimately whether they want to work with us. Below we’ve compiled a list of what we think clients should be asking if they’re looking to hire a new PPC agency.

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By Gareth Owen

Google is going to change the way it displays search results in order to ‘answer questions’ rather than provide a list of sites that might contain the answers. That’s good, hopefully it will enhance user experience etc. – I personally use Wolfram Alpha when I want an actual answer to a question, rather than a list of sites, so I can completely see how this would be useful. HOWEVER, I had a think about what exactly Google has in its arsenal to ‘answer’ my questions and this was just the start of the interesting list of URLs they could use to answer keyword queries I might use: [Read more →]

Last week marked the close of the ‘Palentine’s day’ competition that STEAK’s social team developed for the take away chain, Just-Eat. They wanted to avoid the cliché of marketing around Valentine’s Day by doing something different. STEAK custom built a Facebook app to reward existing fans with a fun piece of engagement around Valentine’s Day.   [Read more →]