Our friend John V Willshire has been developing the analogy that “if advertising is a firework, social media is a bonfire”. We think it’s a good one, and very useful for simply explaining the difference between advertising and social media.

And for our non-UK readers, you can find out more about Bonfire Night here.

Update: As a counter argument, read Asi Sharabi’s On bonfires and that.

Is Social Media a fad or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

From Socialnomics, where there are references for all of the stats used in the video.

Cristina Aced, a freelance journalist and consultant from Barcelona who wanted to know how a social media agency works in London, has spent three weeks with us here at We Are Social. She shares her point of view on the questions brands should ask themselves when embracing social media.

Should a company have a blog? Well, I’d reply: “It depends”. I usually say that it’s not a must to have a corporate blog (or a corporate Facebook profile, i.e.). It makes no sense that a firm has all these 2.0 tools if they are only a tactic. Of course, I think it’s important to monitor social media, in the same way firms follow what happens in mass media, but I defend they don’t have to create a blog just for the sake of it (as we explained in this study published in 2007). Web 2.0 is more than a fad; it should be part of an overall business strategy. The key questions firm should answer are: why do we want a blog?, what are our aims?, how can we integrate it with our strategy?

Yesterday, I was listening to a Spanish radio programme called “L’estiu en un blog” (Summer in a blog, COMRàdio), and they were talking about corporate blogs and how companies use them. They spoke about social media agencies and they quoted We Are Social as an example of best practice. It’s cool to hear the local radio in your hometown speaking about the international agency where you are spending a few weeks (The podcast is available here, but only in Catalan).

Some colleagues ask me if the way of working in social media here in London is different to Spain. I think processes are very similar: the research, the same tools for social media monitoring etc. However, the critical point is strategy. Here, in London, both agency and clients rely on (and believe in) strategy. In Spain, there are professionals able to formulate a social media strategy, but clients still don’t understand the meaning of this. Most of them consider Web 2.0 as just as another tool. That’s the problem. I think I’ll miss the willingness to learn and to understand the new reality that clients have here in the UK. I like the way We Are Social works: brainstorms, working as a team, but most of all, their strategic approach.

I love this 2.0 philosophy, this conversational way of doing things. We Are Social really is a conversation agency, just as they define themselves. It’s my last day here, but the conversation will go on, as the internet breaks boundaries of time and space. Welcome to the age of conversation…

The Twitter population has increased so fast and so massively these last few months that it is going to be harder and harder to organise Twitter meet-ups that bring together a representative cross section of this huge community. It is now time to understand the Twitter population as a network of micro-communities. That’s why, when Rax and Nisha came up with the idea of the Twitgigs Experiment, we thought it was a brilliant initiative.

It’s still a Twitter meet-up, but it’s aimed specifically at people who are interested in music (including the bands themselves who were recruited via Twitter). During the event people were able to share their comments about the music and to vote for their favourite band using Twitter. Tweets were featured on a screen which generated interactions inside and outside of the event and the lucky winner – Essay Like Nephew – was decided on by Twitter voting at the end of the event. It’s a nice human way to share cultural discoveries, such as music, with a wider audience but it is also a clever strategy to link people inside of a community itself.

If you missed the event yourself, here’s a nice overview:

Well done Rax and Nisha, we are looking forward to attend the next Twitgigs! If so you are, don’t forget to follow them on Twitter.

Whilst we always tend to ask our clients “what are your objectives?” rather than thinking “what’s the latest toy?”, there are many who find it hard to avoid the ‘shiny object syndrome’ prevalent in social media marketing.

So it’s useful to be reminded of Gartner’s ‘Hype Cycle’, which has been around a while, but is updated on a regular basis, for different sectors. The 2009 report costs about US$2,000, but the graph is arguably the best bit, so here it is, the 2009 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies.

Some have seen this as supporting evidence for the inevitable ‘Twitter backlash’ that has been foretold by many. Whilst the invasion of Twitter spam, recent DDOS attacks and celebrities jumping on the bandwagon all point to the Trough of Disillusionment, on the other hand it’s also possible that Gartner don’t quite get it.

Microblogging should be further to the left of the graph, and (perhaps) with less time to mainstream adoption. As Read Write Web notes, Gartner don’t consider the growing importance of the real-time web: a much bigger trend that Twitter is only one part of, and something Facebook are taking note of, and which Google have on their radar.

Henry Jenkins, the inspiration behind the idea of transmedia planning, gives his thoughts on convergence culture – like Clay Shirky before him, a must watch.

The entry deadline for the BIMA awards is fast approaching, and this year they have a publicly voted category for Best Blog, which, dear readers, we’d very much like to win!

It’s not clear exactly how the nomination process works, so although we have put some budget aside for bribes for the judges, it does look like the more times we are nominated, the more likely it is we’ll be included in the list of 10 blogs the public (that’s you) will eventually vote on to decide the winner.

So, we’d very much appreciate it if you could do the following:

1. Go to the Best Blog page of their award site
2. Paste http://wearesocial.net/ into the nomination field
3. Hit submit
4. Ask all of your friends and colleagues to do the same (OK, we realise this may be stretching it a bit!)

Thank you…