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.

[Read more →]

By Peter Wood

The STEAK Social team was invited to speak at the Enterprise Ireland Retailer Solutions CEO Forum at East Point in Dublin. Enterprise Ireland help promote the export of Irish business globally. STEAK have been charged with helping to establish Enterprise Ireland clients in the social space over the past 18 months.   

[Read more →]

By Adrian Goodsell, The Wall, 30th January 2012

Looking for a huge numbers of fans? Can’t wait a second longer? Then read on, this blog post is for you…

1. Buy your fans
This is definitely the easiest way to guarantee a following fast; decide how many ‘fans’ you want then simply go to any dodgy-looking site (probably via a Facebook ad) take your wallet out (remember to stick your head in the sand) et voila, success! But wait a second; by definition once you directly pay for a relationship what does that relationship become? What does it really mean? There’s a very obvious analogy here, one that doesn’t involve any love at all…

  [Read more →]

By Peter Wood, The Wall, 26th January 2012

Social media has clunked its way through many evolutions over the years. The past four has seen the digital world settle into a social rhythm. Facebook being the daddy of them all, Twitter is the cooler, younger kid on the block, and LinkedIn taking the lead as the place to hang out to talk serious stuff. The commonality with all of those platforms is they are essentially for everyone. The barriers to entry are extremely low. Most tech savvy people will generally have those three, even if they’re not active in all three (I bet everyone who reads this has all three).

[Read more →]

By Peter Wood, The Wall, 11 January 2012

In the world of B2B, there is no doubt that LinkedIn is king. It’s a fantastic place to cultivate contacts, develop new ones, show off your business knowledge in a brash self-indulgent way and potentially win new business leads. It’s also been a pretty clever way of searching for jobs and it’s a  great way for a multitude of recruitment consultants to access your details and contact you for a ‘chat’.

Things were fine with LinkedIn and business. Employees went on there and pushed their personal brand by imparting their wisdom, this in turn benefited companies because those employees were acting as brand ambassadors which could help generate leads. Everyone was a winner.

[Read more →]

By Peter Wood, The Wall, November 4th, 2011

LinkedIn have been bevering away over the past few months making subtle improvements to their channel. The two stand out innovations are the ‘Ads by LinkedIn Members’ and the company status update.

One of the most pressing conundrums in B2B social marketing is working out ways to seed the content you’re creating into places where people are genuinely interested and grateful to receive it. Creating the content with the right company isn’t a problem; trying to share it in an organic way without spamming however, is time consuming and very manual.

[Read more →]