Whilst I appreciate that people share content in a variety of different ways, I have focused my efforts solely on Twitter. I thought the site would give a good indication of how much content people are sharing without requiring the immense amount of time that would be needed to analyse several social networks and bookmarking sites.

The results of my three month study are interesting. On average, each of the IT trades are tweeted about 2,868 times a month. The Register is the most tweeted about IT Trade, racking up 21,719 tweets by its readers per month – more than 7.5 times as much as the average. And almost 37 times as much as the least tweeted publication.

By comparing the average number of tweets with the number of unique users that Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner says each each publication receives, I found that just 4.18 per cent of each publication’s readership is tweeting links to articles. Computer Weekly has the highest percentage, with a possible 9.06 per cent of users tweeting about articles on the site. However it’s likely that both figures are much lower in reality, as people may tweet more than one link each per month.

Interestingly, IT PRO has the most followers on Twitter, with 12,901 people following its account. The average IT trade has 3,748 followers. This suggests that the number of people following a publication’s Twitter account isn’t the only factor that impacts how much content people share on the social networking site.

A whole host of things can encourage people to share content – frequency of tweets, relevancy and newsworthiness of content on the site, whether or not social sharing buttons are available on the site, which buttons are on offer, where the buttons are positioned, the size and type of readership that each publications has, and of course, which social networks they use most.

What are your thoughts on this? What do you think makes people want to share content? And how can publications encourage more visitors to share links with their network.

As you’d expect, most people were poking fun at Morrisons for making such a silly mistake, and suggesting that the promotion is perfect for bargain-hunting adulterers. But was it really a mistake? Or had Morrisons planned the stunt very carefully to draw attention away from its competitors, who will no doubt be spending a fortune on promoting their Valentines Day cards and gifts at the moment.

Considering the amount of approvals that most press releases and adverts go through, I have to think it’s probably the latter. It’s a clever tactic and one that will help Morrisons to raise its brand awareness further and drive home the message that it offers really good value for money. Whilst also making people think of Morrisons when they go out to get a card for that special someone.

However, this kind of stunt is not without its risks. It could also make the supermarket look down-market, which could put some consumers off. That said, it’s a strategy that has proven to be particularly successful for Ryanair. The company’s CEO, Michael O’Learly, regularly makes outrageous claims to the press that serve to remind the public that the airline is one of the cheapest. Yet at the same time, it can impact how much people trust the brand, which is particularly important if your customers are putting their lives in your hands when they pay you to fly them across the world.

It’ll be interesting to see how and if Morrisons reacts to this online chatter. At the moment the company’s Twitter account hasn’t posted anything related to the offer and neither has its Facebook page. But as more and more people join in the conversation, perhaps this will change.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has read my posts, commented, linked to me or subscribed to my RSS feed in the past couple of years. I really appreciate it and hope that you have found my ramblings and tweets of interest.

And now for a shameless plea… If I am lucky enough to have a place on your blog roll I’d be extremely grateful if you could take two minutes to update it with my new web address.

For the past few months we have used Twitterfeed to herald new blog posts by Speed staff using the @speedcomms Twitter feed, but recently we have experienced problems with Twitterfeed’s service going down quite regularly. So we are now experimenting with Google’s service.

The ‘socialize’ feature uses Google’s new URL shortening service named goo.gl to push blog posts out on Twitter almost instantly. If also offers a couple of interesting options that are above and beyond what Twitterfeed currently offers. It allows users to turn the keywords that they have tagged their blog post with into hashtags, which can help more people to discover your tweets and blog posts by using Twitter Search. The service can also reduce the size of your tweet, making it small enough for other users to retweet and share with their followers.

But there do seem to be a few teething problems at the moment. As not all blog posts are tagged with keywords, some blogging platforms such as WordPress tag them with ‘uncategorized’. Currently Google classes this as a proper keyword and has been tagging tweets with the #uncategorized hashtag.

Will scores of users now migrate from Twitterfeed to Google? Only time will tell, but I suspect that many users will give the new service a try the next time that Twitterfeed goes down.

(Cross posted on the Speed Tech Blog)

The social network had made the decision to pair advertisements with relevant social actions from a user’s friends to create Facebook Ads. This is supposed to make advertisements more interesting and more tailored to you and your friends. But the service is opt-out, not opt-in, which some may see as an infringement on their privacy.

To stop your photos from being used in the way click here to update your privacy settings.

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(Cross posted on the Speed Tech Blog)

Twitter users are invited to add themselves to the map by tweeting the #ukhols hash tag followed by their age, gender, post code and their holiday destination.

Using social media like this can be a great way to build a brand’s profile online and generate lots of quality coverage in both the traditional media and the blogosphere. Vodafone’s map has already gained coverage in the Guardian, the Daily Mirror, and Brand Republic.

The mashup comes a month to the day since I launched my National Work From Home Day map, which was based on the #uksnow map developed by Ben Marsh, who is behind this map too!

And with that I’m off on my hols! See you in a week or two…

To support the day, I have developed a Google Maps mashup for Speed that uses Twitter to allow home workers to display their location. To take part you have to send a tweet containing #NWFHD and the first half of your postcode ie: “#NWFHD WC2H”. The site will then automatically update every 30 seconds throughout the day, displaying the location of Twitter users working from home.

One website that serves to draw attention to bad PR practices is PRfail.tumblr.com. The site was setup nearly a year ago by Jonathan Hopkins to aggregate examples of bad PR highlighted on websites such as Twitter, which sees many users attach the #PRfail hashtag to their tweets.

The site now features plenty of PROs who have pointed our mistakes made by their peers or by the companies they represent, but is this wise?

If I were to criticise a company’s mistake on my blog or on Twitter, Google would automatically connect my name and the name of the company I work for to the name of the company I badmouthed. So if I or the company I work for were to then pitch for a PR brief by that company it would only take a quick search of those names, for example Nike and Speed Communications, to bring up my blog post or my tweets in the first few results. I’m pretty sure that digging up old mistakes that a potential client would rather forget, is probably not the best way to make a good impression.

That said, identifying a ‘PR fail’ and offering a solution as to how the company might have dealt with that crisis more effectively could demonstrate expertise. Though I’m not sure how much expertise you can demonstrate when you’ve already used up 7 characters of your 140 character tweet with a #PRfail hashtag!

My mind’s not totally made up on this. Do you think we should be more careful about what we say online or use our freedom of speech to highlight bad PR in an effort to separate the wheat from the chaff?

The Blog Council was setup in 2007 to give senior executives in charge of social media at the largest corporations in the world, a platform to share ideas and to learn best practices. The Council now has more than 40 members, including the Coca-Cola Company, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft.

I caught up with Bob to find out why he thinks blogs can benefit businesses.

How long have you been blogging?
I have been communicating online for many years, but I really started blogging during the last 3 years. I blogged a lot internally for Dell’s One Dell Way and Marketing Blog to reach Dell’s 80,000 employees and I did a series called ‘TechKnowledge’ on Direct2Dell where I interviewed leading experts about the future of technology. You can expect me to blog on a regular basis related to social media trends on the Blog Council’s blog.

Why did you start blogging?
It’ important to listen and learn with your customers, which is a two-way street. Blogging allows any of us to share a point of view and then listen to the comments. I have to admit I read every comment every time for my posts. You learn a lot from what people enjoy and, quite frankly, just as much when your post is greeted with silence.

How can businesses benefit from writing a blog?
This is a long list, but here’s a few key points.

• Customers are co-creating messages of brands everyday. If you aren’t communicating online, you aren’t really shaping your brand effectively.
• There are hundreds or thousands of conversations occurring everyday about a brand. At Dell, we could see 5-10,000 conversations per day. If you know what customers are interested in, your blogging can become a relevant part of the conversation.
• Blogging is really symbolic, in my view, of telling your story, which is also done well with video, photos, twitter, facebook and many other ways to round out how you share content.
• Overall, it’s really a company’s approach to joining in the conversation that matters the most. Customers can see who really cares and, most importantly, who is trying.

What concerns do businesses have about blogs – and why?
I would flip that around. What concerns should businesses have about how their brands are being shaped without their knowing it? What issues do they not know about due to a lack of strong blog monitoring? How well is a company preparing for a future where 500,000 new people go online everyday for the first time in their lives? Social media is a new discipline that is transforming how we speak with customers, how we conduct e-commerce and how we unlock the knowledge of our employees. The leaders are realising their social media strategy may start with a blog, but this is only a first step.

Should every business blog?
Yes. Every business has conversations with its customers via the phone and in person. Why not via a blog? In a few years, this question will sound like “should every business have a website?” Of course so. Same with a blog.

Which blogs do you particularly admire?
I enjoy reading Jeremiah Owyang’s Web-strategist. If I want to listen to a podcast, I think Neville Hobson and Shel Israel do great work. If I want to see what the world is saying, I look at my customised Netvibes screen or my new Tweetdeck summary.

How do you think Twitter has affected the blogosphere?
Twitter is making people think, which I love. Twitter is showing us that people are willing to follow accounts where they can get information they want at their convenience. Unlike email, which shows up in your inbox whether you like it or not, you have a choice on Twitter to visit or not visit a site. Someday, people will receive the content they want wherever they want it, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, MySpace and they will receive it all at the same time. It will redefine how we distribute content. For example, if I want an update from Starbucks, I might want to only receive it in Twitter and if that can be done, I’m in. If I’m looking for a new bike, maybe I only want updates that contain reviews and new videos delivered to my Facebook account for a certain period of time. So, give Twitter a lot of credit for opening up new ways to reach people effectively. Its power goes well beyond the fact that it is a microblogging tool.

Follow Bob on Twitter: @bobpearson1845

(Please note that this interview was previously posted on the Speed Communications blog)

If I were to cut out all of the articles and adverts that I read and found interesting, and placed them in a pile, I’m sure that pile would be much smaller than the pile of paper ready for the recycling bin. The sports supplement exemplifies this perfectly; I have no interest in sport so this huge wad of paper goes straight in the bin. What an utter waste!

Surely there must be some way for newspapers to provide a more tailored news service that gives their audience exactly what they want. Like an iPlayer for news.

RSS feeds go some way in providing people with a way of subscribing to the types of news they are interested in, but I think newspapers could go further in providing a customised service.

Newspapers could provide a totally tailored news service by employing RSS feeds to offer subscribers a wider range of choice. For example rather than being able to subscribe to news about sport you could subscribe to articles purely about badminton.

Using keywords to tag articles could allow users to subscribe to news about particular people, companies, countries or whatever. This could all then be fed into a single personalised and customisable RSS feed that the user can subscribe to and read on their smartphone, PDA or computer. Or they could pump all of this news into a Guardian24 style PDF that the user could read on their eBook reader or even print out.

I imagine this could be funded with advertising or a subscribtion service, but whether users would be willing to subscribe I’m not sure. Would you rather pay to subscribe to a personalised RSS feed or put up with advertising?