You can view her panel discussion in full here.

Check out her recent feature in Brand Republic here.

So, to help the other 90%, here our my quick guide to measuring the impact of social media:

1. Learn from what works

The only way to do this is to read voraciously. Read the mega posts from the experts who pour over every pixel, data point and new argument. A good start would be Avinash Kaushik and Olivier Blanchard.

2. Decide what is value

Paint a clear picture of why what you are doing matters to the business. Establish where value lies. What are you really trying to achieve? Gaining true ROI can be difficult depending on what you are trying to achieve. Sometimes you will have to use proxies to prove the link. So be prepared for this.

3. Be single-minded and measure what matters

Avoid analysing data puke at all costs. There are hundreds of distracting social data points to sift through. Focus on choosing a few metrics which you want to use as your Key Performance Indicators. These KPI’s will form the basis of your measurement framework and will map back to your business and marketing goals. Whether its NPS, trial, CSAT, loyalty, awareness or churn, it doesn’t matter. Choose one and focus your efforts.

4. Avoid using vanity scores

Engagement is not defined by Likes, Comments, Shares, RT’s etc. This is the outcome of engagement. They are very useful indicators of course, but ultimately a proxy for the Big Hairy Scores of: customer satisfaction, brand love, loyalty etc. Put engagement data in context, along side known benchmarks and map it back to your goals.

5. Establish your analytics suite and get a good work-flow

There are hundreds of tools and dashboards out there. You need to trial, test and get good advice to find the ones that suit your needs. Then establish a good mix of tools that can form your measurement command centre and ideally sync with some of your internal systems. And if you are game enough customise some API’s along the way to refine your analytical picture.

6. Understand how influence works

An increasingly important area of tracking the impact of social is understanding how influence is measured on the social web. Understand the principles, the players and the flaws. It may not be top of mind now, but it will be very soon.

7. Be comfortable with time frames

Tracking the impact of social on a business or brand takes time. This is the long game peeps. Social media marketing data is real time, but if your goals are to build brand performance then this will take time to evaluate. Try and establish milestones to checkpoint progress and compare with any known benchmarks.

8. Look for patterns of change, not absolutes

You are sifting through lots of numbers and most of which are tiny. It’s about connecting the dots between what happened over a period of time to establish patterns, rather than absolute scores you can report on. Mapping content patterns to page performance will help you arrive at decisions on how you can optimise performance.

9. Get your executive team on board

Social media is about change management. If your exec team don’t understand what good looks like in social then it will be difficult to make that cultural progress you need. All interested stakeholders need access to the measurement dashboard and understand what success looks like. This will help you make the case for social and how to budget for future activity.

10. Keep testing and change it up when it doesn’t work

Measurement comes hand in hand with testing. Social is a naturally iterative environment. Use A/B testing where you can to optimise performance. Look at content performance in real time and change if it isn’t performing. Drop things that don’t work, swap out and invest in a steady stream of new initiatives.

11. Focus on gaining value from insight

The best value you can extract from social media is customer insight from intelligent listening and engagement. To put a business value to this is difficult but is doable, but it is probably your best asset when making the business case for future investment.

So if your business hasn’t already, it’s now time to start the hard graft.

Its not easy, it changes all the time and the skeptics will peck away at your endeavours. But hang in there and prove the case. Make the link. Publish your efforts and be prepared to learn along the way.

David McNamara is Strategy Director at Jam.

During the recent IPO documentation, Facebook publically admitted that the growth of mobile has a serious potential to impact their future revenue:

We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven. We believe this increased usage of Facebook on mobile devices has contributed to the recent trend of our daily active users (DAUs) increasing more rapidly than the increase in the number of ads delivered. If users increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, or if we incur excessive expenses in this effort, our financial performance and ability to grow revenue would be negatively affected

With the above in mind, Facebook very quickly have to find routes to successfully monetize this growth.

The App Centre is an immediate answer to that problem.

One of the many clever points of this announcement is that Facebook are unlikely to have annoyed either Apple or Google as this is simply going to help them and their users discover the many applications that have social at heart. This move will arguably make Facebook the biggest cross-platform application aggregator in the world.

For developers and brands alike, the benefits are there for all to see: increased awareness of your applications, the opportunity to develop HTML5 mobile web apps that can quickly find an audience (Facebook now has over 450m+ active mobile users globally) and further revenue generation.

A Facebook App has to use Facebook Connect for it to be featured within the store. This on their part is an excellent move to encourage developers and brands to really think about unique and different ways that they can plug Facebook functionality in to their apps.

This in turn will increase users’ social amplification opportunities. We should remember though that there is no guarantee that this will work for Facebook, but it’s an excellent step in the right direction to embrace the huge growth that we’re seeing in social mobile – and it presents us with some very exciting opportunities to innovate.

Dan Beasley is Head of Mobile at Jam.

Now that the festivities have come to an end, this morning we’ve been getting our sweet, sweet LOLs from What Should We Call Social Media, the ultimate GIF collection for social media professionals. Kind of like This Advertising Life, but slightly more relevant to us at Jam.

Speaking of memes, our Lead Planner, Kate Miltner, was featured in The Atlantic and Mashable for her panel discussion at ROFLcon in Boston, USA. She’s written a number of posts about her experiences at ROFLcon on Spreading Jam, be sure to catch upon her adventures if you haven’t yet.

To mark the occasion, our friends at Engine Group have put together a retrospective of some of our work from the last year. Pop on over to the Engine Blog and have a look.

Engine friends, we share your sentiment. It really has been “one hell of a ride.”

Last Friday, anyone walking through the doors of Building 26 on the MIT Campus were immediately met with a strange sight: a large, foam sculpture featuring some incredibly ugly faces. It was Mount Mememore, the Internet culture version of Mount Rushmore, and instead of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln, you had Me Gusta Guy, three Rage Faces, and poor Forever Alone.

Mount Mememore marked the gateway into ROFLCon III, the third Internet culture conference. Wandering the halls were Internet enthusiasts from all walks of life, ranging from keynote speaker Jonathan Zittrain (co-founder of Harvard Law’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society to Scumbag Steve himself (real name: Blake Boston). There was also this guy, who decided to cosplay Rick Astley and walked around Rickrolling the conference all weekend (he also had the Nyan Cat song to mix it up).  People showed up dressed as Advice Memes got a sneak preview of the new Keyboard Cat toy (coming this spring to a webstore near you), and thumbed through the Choose-Your-Own Adventure themed programme to decide whether they were more interested in seeing a grown-up Success Kid, or a Skype session with Isaiah Mustafa (otherwise known as Old Spice Guy).

However, puncturing the veneer of silly fun that pervaded the conference (Free candy everywhere! Cheezburger yo-yos for all!), there was an undercurrent of seriousness that reinforced what most of the conference attendees already knew: that while they may seem insignificant, memes and Internet culture traffic in some serious social, cultural, and political issues.

In the LOLitics panel, Latoya Peterson used the “Sh*t X Say” and “S*it X Says to Y” meme (i.e., “Shit Girls Say”; “Shit Girls Say to Gay Guys”) to illustrate how memes not only provide a medium for people to perform their identity and represent their lived experience, but to do it in a way that gets people to pay attention and provides a digestible framework for discourse.

In the Global Lulzes panel, bloggers from China and Syria demonstrated how memes create free speech where none exist, and that the remastering and remixing of government propaganda breaks the control and fear that oppressive regimes hold over their constituents.

In both my panel and panel on animated GIFs, the panelists discussed how memes are ‘emotional shorthand’: a way that not only individuals connect and communicate with each other, but how societies reflect their collective anxieties.

After the last panel (a discussion on how to stop repressive legislation like SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA), conference organizers Tim Hwang and Christina Xu announced that, due to the work and resources required to keep ROFL going, it was going on hiatus. As the 800+ person crowd raucously cheered in appreciation for the time and effort put in by the ROFLcrew, there was a real sense of sadness that pervaded their applause. ROFLCon was a joy to experience because both Antoine Dodson and Ethan Zuckerman were equally at home there, reflecting the conference’s ability to simultaneously acknowledge the importance of the issues being discussed while reveling in their frivolity. In that way, it created a perfect IRL microcosm of internet, both wonderful and weird.

I sincerely hope that ROFLCon is not gone forever, and comes back sooner rather than later, because as one conference goer put it, “the appetite for things like this is only going to increase as time goes on”. Conference planning: ur doin’ it right.

Kate Miltner is Lead Planner at Jam. She is a master of memes.

The article can also be found aggregated on Mashable, if that’s more your thing.

Unruly Media also covered her lecture in a blog post entitled ROFLcon Round-up: Aca-meme-ia.

The buzz around Conservative MP Louise Mensh raised some interesting questions about whether Twitter abuse should be criminalised.

A whole slate of new social media apps have been released recently and you need to download all of them.

We’ve also started a Pinterest Board for our favourite apps of all times.

Speaking on Pinterest, we’ve collected and collated a wide selection of our favourite infographics on our Pinterest profile.

You thought the new hybrid Pinstagram was bad, well, you haven’t met textinstagram yet. The new Twitter feed captures memorable scenes in 140 characters or less, which is somehow different to normal twitter.

It’s finally official, the Facebook IPO begins trading on 18 May.

Mensch says she doesn’t blame the social platform, but rather its users.  It’s a fair point, but these incidents do sometimes lead one to question the wisdom of allowing everyone to broadcast their thoughts about everything at any time is the best idea in the world.  If Twitter has shown us anything, it’s that there are a lot of stupid, mean people out there who like to broadcast their ignorant thoughts in badly spelled diatribes.

But it turns out that it is in fact illegal to be an sexist jerk on Twitter.  Stuart Hyde, the Chief Constable of Cumbria Police, says, “We are taking people to court. People do need to understand that while this is a social media it’s also a media with responsibilities and if you are going to act illegally using social media expect to face the full consequences of the law.”  If you spout racist or sexist abuse at somebody, you could be charged under the Communications Act 2003 or the Malicious Communications Act of 1988.

People have actually faced jail for abusive tweets.  A blogger named “Olly Cromwell” (real name John Graham Kerlen)  is facing up to six months in jail for calling a Bexley local councillor a “c*nt.”  Student Liam Stacey has been jailed for a 56 day sentence for racist Tweets he posted about Bolton footballer Fabrice Muamba.  So it does indeed seem that people are being held legally liable for the silly things they say on Twitter.

But free-speech advocates and civil libertarians have raised a number of very good questions about these sentences.  We can all agree that nobody should have to go through the abuse that Louise Mensch, and others, have.  But can this kind of policing of speech go too far?  Who decides what’s abusive and what isn’t? And is getting the long arm of the law involved the best way to stop people from spouting racist and sexist bigotry in social media?  What lesson are we teaching people like Liam Stacey and John Graham Kerlen?  Are they really going to stop being racist and sexist once they get out of jail?

As social media experts, we advise brands – some of whom get a lot of abuse on Twitter –how to handle this kind of thing.  It’s an important question we all have to think about, particularly as more of these cases come to light; when social media gets abusive, what’s the most effective way to handle it?  Should we get the fuzz involved, or use ostracism, shame, and embarrassment to get the abusers to stop?

What do you think?

So, I just read that Mashable article about the guy who manages meme creators. Yes, yes— in the news cycle of the internet, responding to something that is older than 5 minutes is the equivalent of finding a crumbling, yellowed newspaper and wanting to write a letter to the editor (or at this point, writing about Girls), but it brings up a point that is larger than just whether some guy can make a job out of basically being the Ari Gold of Nyan Cats (I SMELL A WEBSERIES!).

Now, I totally understand that someone should not be able to make profit off of someone else’s content without their permission (and ostensibly a slice of the profits). No one likes intellectual property theft (even though, clearly, this happens all the time). The thing is, IP theft requires some form of ownership over said content, and, well… can anyone really “own” a meme?

Of course, the original Keyboard Cat footage belongs to Charlie Schmidt— no one is debating that. But without the legions of people that remixed that footage, Keyboard Cat would have just been some home video from 1986 that languished on YouTube somewhere. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it’s in the public domain and that Busted Tees or whoever should be able to make t-shirts without permission, but I think that there is a distinction somewhere between original online content that ‘goes viral’ (like Shoes, for example) and memes and trends that take off because they got sucked into remix culture or originated in a 4Chan/Something Awful/reddit thread that bled into other platforms and social networks (LOLCats, Advice Memes, etc etc).

This, of course, brings up an entirely different conversation about money and memes, which is that there are quite a few companies that monetize what is essentially the free labor of others (hey, heyyyyy! Who doesn’t love a little political economy thrown into the mix on a Tuesday afternoon!). Don’t get me wrong— I love Cheezburger Networks, but aside from the things created/curated by their editorial staff, the terabytes of content that comprise their empire were made entirely for free by other people. This, by definition, is profiting off of others’ labor. Of course, the argument could be made that all of this labor is entirely voluntary, and that while the site users don’t receive financial remuneration for their efforts, they do get other things in return (community, sense of identity, a free creative tool). Nonetheless, the fact remains that these are for-profit companies that largely run off of other peoples’ creative endeavors, voluntarily submitted or not.

I’m not saying that the Cheezburger Networks of the world are evil, or that Charlie Schmidt isn’t very smart for getting someone to make sure that no one rips off his IP. What I am saying is that the relationship between profit and content creation on the web is far from simple, and that while Ben Lashes may be incredibly clever and niche-carving, the scope of what he’ll actually be able to control and influence is minimal at best.

OH HAI, READERZ. Nice of you to stop by to our nice corner of teh interwebz. Have a seat and enjoy a poptart.  Today, we are going to talk about internet memes! You know, those videos with the dancing bananas, those comics with the angry guy and those colorwheel things with the dinosaurs on them. “What?” you may be saying. “Silly things like this do not have a place on an important business blog!” But do not fret, dear reader. Serious post is serious.

To the uninitiated, memes often seem like weird bits of cultural detritus. Even Clay Shirky, Master King Of Social Media, has called LOLCats “the stupidest possible creative act”. But to dismiss memes out of hand is to ignore an increasingly important part of the cultural landscape—both online and offline. For those of us who spend most of our time on the internet, memes are a part of daily life: they are a mode of communication, an emotional outlet, and a method of defining ourselves and our social groups. For those of us who work in the communications industry (especially social media), understanding the world of memes is essential: after all, how are you going to successfully understand and communicate with your audience if you don’t understand their cultural vernacular?

While I may be biased as to the importance of the internet meme (I wrote my Masters dissertation on LOLCats), I’m not the only one. This weekend in Boston, internet enthusiasts, academics, and the errant marketer or two will converge upon the MIT campus for ROFLCon III, the 3^rd annual internet culture conference. While the main reason that I’m heading over will be to speak on a panel about studying memes in an academic context (and explain about how I actually got a real, awesome job afterward), I’m also there to listen to some smart, funny, and unintentionally famous people discuss (among other things) how race and politics are expressed through memes, the relationship between memes and advertising, artistic and cultural significance of the animated GIF. Also, the guy from OMGSHOES is going to be there (slightly dying of die).

So keep your eyes peeled for MOAR in the next few days. Questions? Requests? Stick them in the comments. No trolls or haterz. KTHXBAI!

Kate Miltner is Lead Planner at Jam. She is a master of memes.

Here are four of our favourite social media apps right now:

Klout for iPhone

The standard social media metric now has it’s own iPhone app. Devoted Klout users can stay on top of their Klout score, incoming +K and influencer lists on the go.

Particularly nice is how the app uses the iPhone’s notification badges to display users’ Klout score right on the home screen.

Download it for here.  Coming soon to Android.

Linkedin for iPad

Linkedin for iPad fundamentally alters the Linkedin experience, putting the focus on aggregating users’ social news stream. The new “updates” feature beautifully displays updates that users’ friends have shared in line with “professional news” such as career changes.

The app also boasts Google Calendar and Exchange calendar integration so that users never miss a meeting while getting caught up on their morning news.

Download it here.

Streamified for iPhone and iPad

Streamified aggregates user’s disparate streams from various social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and even RSS feeds and displays them in a simple, beautiful Pinterest-like display.

Users can bookmark high-impact posts and come back to them later with one touch.

Download it here.

Twitter for iPhone, iPad and Android

The native Twitter application has had an update that improves the Discover, Search and Notification functions. The Discover function now gives users a birds eye view of who their connections follow, updates to their lists, and which Tweets they retweet and favourite.

Download it for iOS devices here and for Android here.

While many of my colleagues use the service, I’m thoroughly addicted. Here’s how Zeebox is changing my TV viewing habits – and my life:

1. I don’t have to decide what to watch.

Being a terminally bad decision maker (Food envy? Every meal. Wish I’d picked the other shoes? You got it.), Zeebox has freed me from the shackles of making my own mind up. I can simply look at what everyone else is watching and jump on the bandwagon according to what’s most popular.

2. I’m in with the C-List.

An avid reader of Heat (Now, Closer, Glamour…), I can now not only watch along with my favourite C-list celebrities using ‘Starwatch’ but I can also judge their viewing habits. Marvellous.

3. I get all the goss without getting dressed.

If I feel like having a glass of wine and gossiping about Embarrassing Bodies, in my pyjamas. I can settle in with Zeebox and a nice Rioja without worrying about styling my hair. Or listening to friends moan about their new boyfriend over the opening credits.

4. I’m more *ahem* culturally literate.

Zeebox not only feeds my Twitter addiction with a live feed for every show but means I’m always prepared for water cooler chat the next day. I can catch up with my boss about their favourite soaps, without having to actually watch a single episode.

5. Seen it? Liked it? I can buy it.

I need never wonder what a vajazzle is again. Live ‘Zeetags’ listen to what is being said in whichever programme I decide to tune into and supply relevant links to keep me up to date and informed. With an increasing number of advertisers now also seeing the potential, I can also shop whilst I watch.

Rachel Wilson is an account executive at Jam and Social TV enthusiast.

Now, we all know that Sir Ian McKellen and Stephen Fry saved the Hobbit Pub after a successful social media campaign. That is over and done and faded into social media lore.

But what about the Hungry Hobbit café? Their cause did not have celebrity backing and they’re still in contest with the SZC.

However, the JRR Tolkien fan group called the ‘Middle-Earth Network’ has taken up the cause – without celebrity endorsement. Originally built as a social network is for fans of fantasy and science fiction to connect and share their passion, the network has evolved to act as a grassroots social media campaign to defend the Hungry Hobbit.

The network has its own radio station, which is where the Hungry Hobbit’s owner, Wendy Busst, was recently interviewed about the cafe’s legal battle with the SZC:

We are hopeful that we will be able to reach a suitable deal with SZC. We raised the possibility of a nominal licence fee with them in November last year, which they did not come back to us on instead asking us to phase out the name.

On speaking to Middle-earth Network they suggested that SZC backed down over the Southampton pub because of the force of the publicity and public support, but there is no guarantee that they will follow the same route with our business.

We can only wait and hope and do our best to raise awareness and public support.

Mark Ostley, director of Operations at Middle-earth Network, said they hope the same licence will be offered to the Hungry Hobbit as has been offered to The Hobbit:

While we respect the rights of the Saul Zaentz Company to protect, police and enforce its trademark, we want them to do it responsibly and we invite them to see this as a new era of understanding and conciliation with the fans of the world that JRR Tolkien created.

If you feel touched by this story, then you can take action by joining the Facebook campaign to save the Hungry Hobbit or tweet a message of support to @hungry_hobbit. This story has already shown that social media can have a real impact so let’s see if lightening will strike twice!

Bonny Parker is Customer Services Manager at Jam.

A few old and new things stuck which I found quite interesting. Here are a few reflections:

1. Klout, the social speed limit.

As everyone knows, I think, social is all about the ability to move content around the web. Surfing social and interest graphs through to paid, owned and earned properties. The velocity and direction of this travel is dictated by two fundamental things: your content strategy and your network strategy. Here is the rub. Most people don’t want to move content. They are just happy to observe, consume and watch.

To stimulate velocity you need influencers, taste makers, mavens and those people who can tip that fantastic content forward. At the moment Klout are the chief signifiers of propagation velocity potential. So in a way, Klout scores could be read as speed limits. Choosing how you change gears using influencer marketing will help make your content travel faster.

2. What’s authenticity worth?

The issue of authenticity came up when engaging bloggers for brand outreach. How do you keep them honest? The debate produced some interesting points about the idea of self regulation of bloggers and how content authenticity as the ultimate badge of credibility will always win out in an online world of fake social proof. And in a world where there is content abundance how could you create a content scarcity strategy to build social capital and influence?

3. Identifying Influencers.

How to find the right influencers also came up. How to actually qualify Klout scores and to dig deeper to find that quality assurance. It reminded me that you should always look for that magic middle. Find those emerging bloggers and citizen influencers who want to be tomorrow stars, but are quite happy with a smaller but growing and motivated followership.

4.  Internal Klout?

An interesting tangent was harnessing influencers to help ignite social business change within an internal enterprise environment. How to use scoring techniques to select influencers, sceptics and emerging stars you think will be the catalyst for change. Connected to this is the trend of Klout scores frequently seen on CV’s in the US. For example: you evaluate two similarly skilled candidates one with a Klout score of 15 and one with 55 (with a score of 50 putting you in the top 95% influence percentile) would this tip your decision? Not sure…but it’s an interesting debate.

5. It really is about the “little guy”.

Reflecting on #bloomroi and #returnoninfluence I re-read the work Deep Mile did on analysing the Egyptian Arab Spring revolution. They rinsed 25 million tweets to find the “revolutionary hidden hands” who propagated and steered the course of those momentous events. Whilst confirming that Wael Ghonim indeed played a pivotal role they discovered that there were no less than eight unconnected, geographically diverse and vocationally ordinary citizens who became the epicentre of #jan25. These eight people were not activists, but managed to become so integral in events they literally became the lead signal: when they spoke people listened and reacted. Eight ordinary citizen influencers that helped move the world.

For me, as I have said before, Klout and other algorithms are not perfect, nor will they ever be. If we ever enter that perfect algorithmic world, it will be a sad day indeed. However, Klout and others are good proxies for seeing ‘valued signals’ through a very noisy world. The methodologies will get more sophisticated as digital economies grow, on and offline lives converge and when it becomes culturally acceptable to see ‘scores’ as indicators of who you are and what you might be.

The rise of the citizen influencer has only just started, but the industry of influence marketing has a long way to go to legitimately professionalise and take the sceptics along the journey!

David McNamara is Strategy Director at Jam. He blogs on Planning Notes.

Now you can share your best, funniest or just plain ugliest drawings with your Facebook and Twitter friends.

This update was only a matter of time. Alex Miller recently explained that the key to Draw Something’s success is human interaction:

It’s the praise you get from your friend for a clever or creative drawing, the piss taking you get for an awful attempt and the private jokes hidden in each drawing that only your friend would understand. This is the genius of Draw Something, that OMGPOP have captured all the banter, competitiveness and cheek that you have with your mates in a simple game on 3.5” screen.

For more Draw Something fun, check out our Pinterest Board, Draw Something: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

Download Draw Something for iPhone or Android.

1. “Deals” are out. It’s all about “Offers” now.

Facebook has replaced their location-based discounts service “Deals”, with a more user-friendly service called Offers.

Offers is a simple new mechanic. Brand Page admins can post an Offer via the Page Timeline. Users click the offer to claim it, and will receive an email to their primary designated email address that they can either print or display via their mobile at the nominated physical store location in order to redeem their discount. Offers are free to create, although Facebook are naturally encouraging people to spread their reach via paid for ads and sponsored stories.

Presently, Offers is only available to a select number of paid advertising clients in the U.S, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Turkey

2.Tune in with the “Listen” button.

Musicians’ Pages have been given a “Listen” button right next to the Like button. When clicked, the artist’s songs will start playing in the users’ preferred music streaming app, such as Spotify.

Try it out on Radiohead’s Page.

3. Users can download even more of their personal data.

The “download your information” button was first introduced in 2010 (it lives in your Account Settings), and gave users a one-click way to retrieve a copy of what they’ve shared including photos, posts, messages, a list of friends and chat conversations.

The update lets users also download even more information, from friend requests made to mobile numbers associated with the account, names of listed family members – and even IP addresses they have logged in from!

Facebook is the natural home for brands to maintain loving, caring interactions with their customers. But many companies view their community as a captive audience, where they can force product down people’s newsfeeds whilst completely ignoring customer service. These brands are making the mistake of drawing a line in the duvet and telling their fans not to cross.

There’s been a lot of talk about the impact of Facebook Timeline for brands, but aside from some nice design elements, some useful ad formats, the history of the trench coat and some grainy photos of the ’77 FA cup, we’re yet to see anything that uses this new functionality in a way that looks ahead, and more importantly, moves community management forward.

IMMINENT BUZZWORD WARNING

Crowdsourcing seems to have fallen out of favour recently, and understandably so. For a while now companies have had eyes bigger than their stomachs.  They ask too much of their customers.

WANNA STAR IN OUR NEXT AD?

WANNA DESIGN OUR NEW LOGO?

WANNA HELP US INCREASE REVENUE IN Q3?

Sound familiar?

The fact of the matter is that people want to be listened to. And there’s something nice about a brand  that actually values their customers’ input. But there’s a limit and no one wants to feel like they’re doing someone else’s job for them.

IMMINENT CLIENT BIAS WARNING

Reciprocity has always underpinned our approach to community management. And in a post-Timeline world Samsung SSD is coming into its own. They have used the Timeline roll-out to reignite their reciprocal relationship with their fans: by giving them control of the cover image.

How it works is simple: they ask their fans what they would like to see in their cover image and then work with an artist to make it happen: sharing the duvet amicably, so to speak.

The artistic talent behind the scenes is illustrator Jennie Webber who works each week to bring the creative suggestions of the community to life.

Where you may expect to find a 600-megaton super computer made of neon dials, clashing gradients, twisted steel and sex appeal – you instead find simple hand-drawn images in crisp orange or blue. Part of a refined brand identity a world apart from their nerdy tech competitors.

Watch this space for the forthcoming image gallery or keep up to date on the Samsung SSD Facebook page.

Luke Norton is a planner at Jam.

But despite all the fun, and the potential for brands to use Pinterest, there are a few big issues to consider before jumping  on the Pinterest bandwagon.

The old Pinterest Terms and Conditions included a clause that allowed Pinterest to own and sell copyrighted content posted on the site (“[Y]ou hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a…license…to…sell…and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services”), which was slightly alarming.

The other issue was that Pinterest required that you own or licensed the copyright to any image that you pinned.  Individuals violated this rule with impunity, but obviously brands have to be much more careful.

On 6 April 2012, after a fair amount of negative publicity, Pinterest changed its Ts and Cs to address the concerns. This has gone some way to assuage the fears about brands using the site, but there are still some guidelines that companies should abide by:

1. You must own or have the right to use any content you pin. Copyright holders are going to be very vigilant about branded Pinterest presences using their content without permission. Not having this permission will create needless headaches. Use your own content or get permission in writing from copyright holders. If you don’t have written permission, don’t pin the image.  Users will have to cover any legal costs that arise from copyright issues.

2. If people appear in images you pin, consider privacy concerns. You should get release forms from any person featured a branded Pinterest if you don’t already have the rights to that person’s image.

3. Be very cautious about using UGC on a branded Pinterest. It is difficult to verify who owns the copyright to UGC; someone could claim they own the copyright when they don’t. Companies will need to establish guidelines of how UGC is verified and how permission to use the images will be obtained.

4. Be aware of Pinterest’s deletion policy. Should you wish to delete your Pinterest present, you can do so, but any pins that belong to you that other Pinterest users have pinned will remain.

5. Beware of spam. Because of Pinterest’s explosive growth, scammers have turned their attention to the site, and are using fake “free giveaways” from brands to drive customers to survey scam sites. The site needs to be carefully monitored to make sure spammers aren’t using your products and to make sure that it doesn’t become overwhelming.

If brands keep their guidelines in mind, and train their community managers to abide by them, Pinterest can be a useful and powerful tool to create a brand presence and learn from customers.

Shana Pearlman is an account manager at Jam.

Now that the dust has settled down, some members of Jam have prepared their statements:

Dave McNamara, Strategy Director:

Facebook’s acquisition came as a surprise to the industry, but in a way this should have been expected. Instagram is the best mobile photo sharing experience on offer and has a community of committed fans. Facebook doesn’t really have a mobile proposition, so this is a flying start to a buoyant market.

This deal certainly confirms the belief that the currency of social media is photos. As smart-phone adoption continues more people are choosing image over text as their status update of choice. This visual communication is emerging into a new global language with Facebook now the master purveyor. The cultural implications of the interest graph and the world ‘speaking’ through photos will be profound and fascinating to witness.

But as users become more sophisticated their needs get more demanding. To keep their 30m fans engaged Instagram will need to quickly release some innovative updates to combat any Facebook fatigue, simmering resentment and user migration. Integrating into the Facebook platform will need to be deftly handled. Ensuring the beautiful user experience is not lost, but enhanced.

I think the other aspect of this deal is what it will provoke from competitors. Might this acquisition spark the resurgence of Flickr? There are rumours of Yahoo selling but I wonder what a renewed and mobilised Flickr proposition might look like. And what of Tumblr, Path, Google+ and the rest. The race for the best mobile photo sharing user experience has now started for real.

Dan Beasley, Head of Mobile:

I’m absolutely staggered by the valuation. Instagram has been built with monetisation from their users a distant thought, of course this could change quickly if Facebook decide to flood it with ads.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a behind-the-scenes bidding war between Facebook and Google. I think its safe to assume that we will see a Google acquisition in this space before too long, maybe Hipstamatic (remember them?) or one of the many other apps that have popped up in this space.

The big question here is: what is Facebook buying? They’re not buying a new audience, Instagram users typically have a facebook account already. There’s no revolutionary tech or valuable patents powering Instagram and if they wanted to Facebook’s could have built a suite of faux-old-fashioned filters in next to no time. They’re buying market dominance. As we all know Facebook is about to IPO and with that in mind they have to be the dominant force in the social mobile space. Facebook built their platform around photo sharing, Instagram is the number one alternative to Facebook photos on mobile, so they simply had to buy this highly engaged community.

The mock outrage from the Instagram user base has been predicable. Anyone pretending that Instagram is this quiet, artistic little network is kidding themselves. Instagram has been mainstream now for months; its trajectory nicely matches the swift uptake in iPhone 4S sales. Better cameras equals more photos to share.

Mel Kirk, Blogger Engagement Manager:

I was surprised to learn that Facebook intends to leave Instagram as a standalone product, a first in Facebook’s history. They sunk Gowalla within a year of acquisition. It’ll be interesting to see whether they’re hoping to use the functionality or whether it’s simply quashing another growing competitor. There are likely to be some changes to the app as we know it. Right now, Instagram users can easily push photos to Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. It’ll be interesting to see whether the emphasis shifts to sharing to Facebook only.

What stands out for me is the size of the purchase in comparison to the scale of Instagram. Instagram still only has 12 employees. Instagram is a mobile-only app. Until the other day it was iPhone-only. If there’s one loud and clear message here it is that this purchase shows how far mobile has come and how important it will continue to be in the future.

And that is the compelling power of Draw Something, the hottest game going on iOS and Android.

The game launched in February and amassed a cool 30,000 downloads on day 1. Not bad for a new release from an unknown developer. Within a week, however, that had grown to over a million. Then screen grabs of great (and terrible) drawings started popping up across the social web and the game exploded. The app was downloaded more than 25 million times, practically overnight.

The game, originally created by New York-based OMGPOP, has now been purchased by the social gaming titan Zynga for $180m (£113m) – after just under two months on the market.

Draw Something takes the old, familiar format of Pictionary that we all know and love and updates it for the mobile age.

To start a round of the game, you pick one of your mates from Facebook and challenge them to play. Then players alternate turns drawing and guessing at what is being drawn, remotely.  Dead easy.

So what’s the secret behind the game’s runaway success? Simple human interaction.

It’s the praise you get from your friend for a clever or creative drawing, the piss taking you get for an awful attempt and the private jokes hidden in each drawing that only your friend would understand. This is the genius of Draw Something, that OMGPOP have captured all the banter, competitiveness and cheek that you have with your mates in a simple game on 3.5” screen.

The game’s secret is that you have to play with your real Facebook friends, there’s no “single player” mode. Draw Something is all about impressing your friends or making them laugh – it’s not about your talent as an artist. It’s not even possible to “win” this game. The whole objective is to see how long you and your mate can keep up a steady stream of drawings without messing up or quitting.

And whether or not OMGPOP knew they had managed to achieve this they certainly were smart about their approach to commercializing the game from the start. They didn’t take the approach most social networks have taken – build a community first and then worry about commercialization. They have built in a commercial model from the start – from mobile ads and interstitials and the virtual colour pallets you absolutely need to buy in order to create your masterpiece and impress your mate. After all, I can’t be the only one in the world making panicked, late night in-game purchases.

For more Draw Something fun, check out our Pinterest board, Draw Something: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for the best and worst Draw Something pics ever.

Alex Miller is CEO of Jam. Follow him on Twitter.

Here’s the top 5 things Zeebox is radically changing in TV Land:

1. It makes TV more personal

Zeebox lets users totally personalise their EPG by sorting, favouriting and editing their channel lists. Zeebox’s Anthony Rose also says, “When you’re trying to decide what to watch, instead of just clicking through a list of channels, you’ll be able to see which ones are the most popular right now, watch with friends, buzz friends to come watch with you.” You may never end up watching a dud again.

2. It offers a new advertising opportunity

Zeebox actively “listens” to the programmes users are watching and offers up in-line links, or “Zeetags”, to buy the products being mentioned on TV. Think next-level product placement. This clever monetisation scheme allows advertisers to identify new audiences and think intelligently about how to engage these audiences to encourage them to click and ultimately buy, without interrupting their TV watching.

3. Finally, advertisers can really link TV ads directly to web traffic data

Marketing Week wrote in October about advertisers’ impatience for more data to prove the effectiveness of TV advertising. Using Zeebox, adverts can be created with specific calls to action and effectiveness can be monitored more accurately as a result. As the platform integrates more deeply with Twitter and Facebook, there are ever more opportunities to exploit the data on offer.

4. It has major player buy-in

In January 2012 BSkyB hailed 2012 as “the year of the tablet”. Not surprising then that they’ve snapped up a 10% stake in Zeebox and already begun integrating the app into their offering. During the final of Got To Dance in March this year, users could access a live in-app video feed for the very first time. E4 and ITV have also been quick to see the potential, using the app alongside selected reality TV shows.

5. It now comes as standard

The Company has partnered with electronics manufacturer Vestel to bring the technology to up to 9 million new connected TVs which have the app already embedded. All of this leaves Zeebox well placed to be the indispensible companion to TV viewing, the best thing to happen to TV since TV?

Rachel Wilson is an Account Executive at Jam. Follow her on Twitter.

Launched in October 2011, Zeebox is a free interactive social experience which capitalises on the dual screening phenomenon by bringing users closer to their favourite TV programmes. The Social TV platform is a hit with viewers and broadcasters alike.

Here’s the top 9 reasons to take Zeebox seriously:

1. Thanks to a TV ad campaign launched last month, Zeebox has been adding up to 15,000 new users an hour since.
2. Total UK user figures are currently not published but there were an estimated 250,000 influential fans of the app in January.
3. The app links directly through to iTunes where users can buy songs featured during TV shows.
4. The app’s new “Zeetags” (in-line links to buy products that appear on the programmes being watched) appear on about 20% of UK TV’s commercial break ads with this figure on the rise.
5. Users can see what their favourite stars are watching with “Starwatch”, they can then watch along with them and contribute to the conversation via the Twitter feed.
6. Social payments and voting mechanics are coming soon to create a truly immersive companion app.
7. Zeebox cites almost a third of all internet usage is the UK is done while watching TV and more than half of viewers browse the web while watching TV.
8. Earlier this year Zeebox teamed up with BSkyB to allow the TV-sharing service to be used within Sky’s existing mobile apps, namely Sky+ and Sky Go.
9. New features are being added to the app every two weeks, the latest development being the ability to create a personalised 7 day TV guide.

Rachel Wilson is an account executive at Jam and Social TV enthusiast. Follow her on Twitter.

Which is a shame, really, because it is one of the most-exciting, most-engaging and most-promising networks for companies and brands to get involved with.

The site, valued at £500 million, draws in 14 billion monthly page views – more than either Twitter or Wikipedia – and has more than 36 million registered users. There are 5.4 million in the UK alone. These users post a total of 42 million posts per day.

But What is Tumblr?

Tumblr is one part super-simpler blogging platform, one part social network.

With little friction, users can post a variety of different types of content – text, photos, quotes, links, conversations, audio, or films. Tumblr posts tend to be photo-heavy and light on the text. It’s a short-form style with more room than Twitter.

Users can follow other users and read all of their different posts in the newsfeed on their Dashboard. Users can “like”, reply to, or “reblog” their fellow bloggers posts.

Reblogging is the key to Tumblr. It is like a built-in “viral button” – when a user hits the reblog button, that post gets reposted on their own site with a link back to original.

The best posts get reblogged like wildfire, quickly rising to prominence in Tumblr’s master directory. The average is nine reblogs per post – which is an extremely high engagement metric.

What is Tumblr for?

Facebook is for friends, Linkedin is for work, Twitter is for information and communication and Pinterest is for swapping cupcake recipes.

Tumblr is for creativity and self-expression.

Tumblr pages are infinitely and easily customizable, and tastefully so, unlike the heyday of MySpace.

However, the best form of self-expression on Tumblr is posting really great content. Moreso than any other network, content is the king of Tumblr. All of those millions of blogged (and reblogged) posts contain really, really good content. High-quality photos reign supreme – it’s not surprise that the network is especially popular with the publishing, broadcast, fashion and lifestyle sectors.

Top Tips for Brands on Tumblr

• Pick an Angle: Many successful branded Tumblr blogs have a great angle that compliments their brand identity. For example, Huggies nappies (from the States) have a Tumblr called Highchair Critics that updates followers on baby news. Clever.
• Link and Lead: Brands can use Tumblr as part of their larger stock and flow content strategy by using the network’s short-form style to supplement and link back to long-form content on other blogs or even their homepage. This is a great way to drive page views within Tumblr’s highly-engaged user base.
• Give and Take: See out top blogs in your brand’s sector, follow them, “Like” their posts and sometimes give them a reblog. Whenever you like or reblog a post – your brand name will be permanently attached to that post and show up in other followers’ Dashboards.
• Ask and Answer: Tumblr has a great “Ask” feature that allows followers to submit questions. This is a great way for brands to interact with their fan base.
• Repackage and Repurpose: The short-form nature of Tumblr makes it an ideal platform to get extra mileage out of content that your brand has created for other purposes.
• Tag Well and Tag Often: Tumblr tracks the best trending tags that users are using. By making use of the most-popular tags, brands are much more likely to end up featured in the Directory and users’ “Tracked Tags”. Conversely, create a new tag for your brand and encourage followers to use the “Track This Tag” function.

Great Brands on Tumblr:

• IBM runs a Tumblr called A Smarter Planet, which compliments the Smarter Planet initiative on their homepage.
• The New York Times’ “T” Magazine has a Tumblr that gives the Sunday insert a weekly lifespan.
• The impossibly cool Ace Hotel has a Tumblr mood board where they push their brand’s coolness further into the realm of impossibility.
• J Crew, the American retail giant, gives readers “a glimpse behind the design: inspiration, style & musings” on  770 Behind The Line.
• Alexander McQueen maintains one of the most popular fashion blog’s on the network, McQ. They average 520 likes per post.
• Even Twitter has a Tumblr – where they keep users up-to-date when the Fail Whale rears its ugly head.

Social Spotlight is a monthly feature shining the light on social networks worth your time.

Dan Osburn is Brand Manager at Jam. He blogs and tweets.

Jam will develop a UK social media strategy for Tesco Mobile and manage the network’s online communities. The scope of work for Jam encompasses the Tesco Mobile network, the Tesco Phone Shop retailer and Tesco Direct online sales portal.

The Brand team at MHP, headed by Deputy Head Jo Slatem, will handle press office and consumer facing campaign activity for Tesco Mobile.

Jamie Kenny, Jam’s Chief Strategy Officer says, “This is an exciting opportunity for Tesco Mobile to bring PR and social media together to deliver more effective communication to consumers and drive engagement with the brand”.

Campaign Magazine and The Drum have both reported on our latest win.

Following on from the recent SXSW it seems all eyes in social media are fixed on the box – Zeebox to be precise. To quote the words of Mugatu from the movie Zoolander:  Social TV is “so hot right now”.

But beyond all the hoopla, another media channel has been quietly perfecting the art of engagement for decades without getting the credit it deserves. I’m talking about radio.

Did video kill the radio star?

The emergence of music video gave birth to MTV and transformed the ways in which we experience music, creating stars like Madonna and Michael Jackson in the process. Years later the Internet would revolutionize things again. This time both MTV and the record labels were caught napping, allowing YouTube, iTunes and more recently Spotify to gain ascendancy.

But it turns out video didn’t kill the radio star after all. The latest listening figures from Rajar show essentially a flat picture with marginal growth between 2011 and 2012. The lack of growth is unsurprising when you consider that over 90% of the UK population listens to radio (yes, that’s more people than log on to Facebook). What’s perhaps more surprising is that even in this media saturated world, the amount of hours spent listening to radio is actually going up.

The return of  ‘Smashey and Nicey’

There are a number of parallels between social media and radio – specifically talk radio. Both aim to engage audiences in one-to-many conversations using news, entertainment, gossip, competitions and polls to stimulate conversation. Both are obsessed with growing audience share and building loyalty. Crucially, both appear to be easy, but are deceptively difficult to do well.

In the early 1990’s comedians Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse created the characters of Mike Smash and Dave Nice to highlight how cheesy celebrity radio DJs had become. When I look at the world of social media, I sometimes think that their personalities have been reborn on a number of brand Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. These pump out meaningless clichés and trite conversation starters in a desperate bid for the all-important ‘Like’, comment or Retweet. This is all relatively harmless, but there is also a darker side to radio.

Shock Jocks

As I’ve written before, there’s plenty of evidence to demonstrate that courting controversy can help content to go viral.

In the UK, talk radio veterans such as Vannessa Fletz, James Whale and Nick Ferrari have built their careers by being highly opinionated. In the US, ‘Shock Jocks’ such as Howard Stern have turned being provocative into a performance art.

The danger is that the constant need for attention can drive increasingly extreme behaviours. Talk radio has provided a platform for individuals such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to air extremist political views and find sympathetic audiences. But as the on-going backlash against Limbaugh’s recent remarks about Sandra Fluke demonstrate, even in the land of free speech, it is possible to go too far.

Social Media DJs

Anything that helps brands develop more distinctive and meaningful personas on social media is to be welcomed, but we should be mindful of the lessons to be learned from talk radio.

Both Betfair Poker and Waterstones Oxford St have used writers and comedians to help create quirky characters on Twitter. Given radio’s long history of effective audience engagement, instead of hunting for social media gurus, perhaps agencies should start employing DJs. Just be careful about which ones you choose.

This post originally appeared on the Campaign Blog.

Jonathan Akwue is the Global Client Managing Director at Engine and a friend of Jam. He regularly contributes to the Campaign Blog.

A few of us fortunate Jammers were invited to the event in the historic Girdlers’ hall to help them celebrate. Keynote speakers included Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, former Cabinet Secretary Lord Gus O’Donnell and St Giles Trust Patron Lord Phillips of Matravers, President of the Supreme Court. There were also speeches from ex-offender, now SOS case worker, Christian, and the 17 year-old Adrianne, who both recounted their heartfelt stories about how St Giles had helped them to get their lives back on the right track. Their stories were incredibly moving (a few jaws on the floor) and it was fantastic to hear of the support first hand.

St Giles Trust Chief Executive Rob Owen said of the anniversary:

“Much has changed since 1962.  However, for many of our clients their needs have not changed.  They lack support, somewhere to live, stability and employment.  They continue to be those who fall through the gaps in the state’s support system.  Our role is to help them navigate this and act as the glue which brings together all the different sources of support.”

Navigate it, they have done. They now work with over 20,000 people each year and an independent economic analysis has shown that St Giles Trust’s support services for prison leavers can deliver £10 in criminal justice cost savings for every £1 invested in them.

We’ve been working with St Giles Trust and their SOS Gangs project for the last year and raised £1,500 through a variety of food-fuelled activities. Junior Smart leads the SOS Gangs project, you can see Junior in action here when he came in to talk to us about his project.

A celebratory film on the last 50 years of St Giles Trust can be viewed here and if you would like to donate you can click here. You can also sponsor our very own Tara Davanzati who is running the London Marathon in aid of SGT.

Claire Collings is Buzz Operations Director at Jam.

Saul Zaentz owns the rights to both the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the upcoming film, The Hobbit. To capitalise on their prized copyright, Saul Zaentz is trying to make ‘The Hobbit’ pub in Southampton and ‘The Hungry Hobbit’ in Birmingham, both change their names on the basis of copyright infringement.

Tolkien originally published his much loved book, The Hobbit in 1937, following up in 1954 with the first instalment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. Saul Zaentz originally acquired the rights to the Tolkien’s most famous work back in 1976 when he originally produced an animated version of the Lord of the Rings in 1978. ‘The Hobbit’ public house, which has been running for 20 years, is a favourite amongst local students and offers cocktails such as ‘Gandalf’ and ‘Gollum’. The ‘Hungry Hobbit’ cafe has been trading under this name for the past 6 years and stands on the street where Tolkien grew up. It would appear that the catalyst for the action taken by Zaentz is the imminent release of eagerly anticipated The Hobbit film.

This real-life David and Goliath struggle has seen Stephen Fry and Sir Ian McKellen come together to publically dismiss such action and added their “social weight” to generate a Facebook community of over 58,000 people coming together to save the Southampton public house. But the fight is not over – The Hungry Hobbit is still under threat and whilst they have begun to gain traction with Tolkien fans, they are still struggling to push past 3600 supporters on Facebook.

It feels inheritantly wrong to many fans that whilst the ‘The Hobbit’ in Southampton has been granted a reprieve, the Birmingham cafe (which is in the heritage heartland for Tolkienite’s worldwide and  a stone’s throw from Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog, both of which inspired places within his novels) should be neglected.

If you feel touched by this story, then you can take action by joining the Facebook campaign to save the Hungry Hobbit or tweet a message of support to @hungry_hobbit. This story has already shown that social media can have a real impact so let’s see if lightening will strike twice!

Bonny Parker is Customer Services Manager at Jam. Follow her on Twitter.