If you’ve had your head stuck in the sand, especially during lockdown, TikTok is a thing. And what’s even more perfect is the BOOM of reality star sounds. We are talking about the current day – Hey all you cool cats and kittens, it’s Carole Baskin – back to the days of the BEST celeb BB ever and the GC (Gemma Collins). Becki is going to tell you what you need to know. What is a sound? That’s the song/track you make your TikTok too (we’ve made a super handy guide for how to make your first TikTok here) and whilst we started with songs to make funny, beautiful or, dare we say, it “sexy” dances too, as with all things beautiful it’s evolved to include the sounds of people voices. And why do reality stars make this so perfect? Because we’ve all heard of those famous TV moments when a wannabe celeb makes comedy gold. Nikki Graham, we’re looking at you. Those moments you just rewatch over and over again (David’s Dead – Tiffany – Celeb BB 2016) and TikTok is the perfect place to use those one-liners. No other platform offers you a simple way to do this like our beloved TikTok. Which celebs are making the grade? The one and only GC – this sound has 18.5k videos using it. @rylanArguing with the voices in my head ##fyp ##rylan ##foryoupage ##gemmacollins♬ original sound – gc.best.moments Love Island’s Amber – this sound has 20.2k videos using it. @anastasiakingsnorthWhen your boyfriend who isn’t your boyfriend likes another girls photo tehe ♬ Follow evie fensome – jade22__ Big Brother’s, Chloe Ferry – this sound has 13.7k videos using it. @laurenjayneofficial##geordieshore ##foryou ##foryoupage ##featureme ##fyp ##uk♬ KATIE LUNN MADE THIS SOUND – flippingfannyflutters Tiger King – this sound has 24.1k videos using it. @bmwalkerrmy brain plays this on loop someone send help ##foryoupage ##fyp ##fypage ##lesbian ##gay ##earthday♬ Dont say it Carol Baskin – charlottekevern Are celebs making themselves famous? Interestingly, celebs don’t seem to be using or creating their own sounds – other users are, and making themselves better known on TikTok this way. Take @gemtollerfield (165.3k followers). She made the famous Megan McKenna I need to eat food sound – it’s been used in 28.6k videos. So why aren’t celebs making themselves more famous with their own sounds? Well, first up, the majority of these sounds are mocking (mostly in a fair/friendly way) the celeb in question, so it doesn’t work for them to use it. Secondly, a fair few of our famous sound celebs aren’t actually on TikTok (the GC included, a travesty) so they quite simply can’t create them. That doesn’t stop other celebs using them. A real star with this is Kady McDermott, who uses sounds to boost her own presence. Like using GC sounds here, here and Kim K here and of course, Tiger King here. Why are only certain celeb sounds being used? As we’ve said before, the almost pantomime-like use of celeb sounds is a major factor in why they’re used so much. A sound of Gwyneth Paltrow banging on about Goop again (FYI Gwyneth doesn’t have any sounds at the moment) just isn’t going to cut the mustard here. It’s over the top, can’t believe they said that celebs, that make the grade, not the idolised ones. The Kardashians are very popular for this. Obviously. How are brands using this? The likes of Love Island and Big brother, use their own sounds, with their own copyright, across TikTok. In the main, these are coupled with the original clip, which whilst funny, is no different to what you can do on YouTube or Twitter. Where these sounds come into their own is when they are coupled with funny or relatable videos, and taken in a new context that the audience can connect with. It allows an extension of the audience for reality shows – catching those people who might not watch a whole series but who will engage in the big moments. Take for example, the GC (again, there’s a theme here) and her famous – “I’m claustrophobic Darren” from Big Brother – this sound was almost made for lockdown and became perfectly relatable when used in videos such as this one. Users can’t recreate this on any other platform and so this is where TikTok comes into its own. @thebowensMe after a week of self isolation. (Don’t worry guys I’m not going anywhere, just to sulk in the garden) ##gemmacollins ##foryoupage ##foryou.♬ original sound – 16kyro There aren’t an overwhelming amount of brands using celeb sounds and this could simply be a copyright issue. Music is intrinsically built into TikTok, and brands don’t shy away from using those, but only a few seem to have ventured into celeb sounds. However, Pretty Little Thing, have just recently chosen to use a sound from Amber on Love Island and it works perfectly for their audience. @prettylittlethingI’m bothered @chloeroseofcl 😜 We are following 3 people back who like and comment on this post 👀✨ GO! 🦄##loveisland ##humour ##fashion♬ Follow evie fensome – jade22__ So where does this leave us? It leaves us basking in the nostalgia of Big Brother 2016, Love Island (series 2 for the win) and other glorious moments of true pantomime that only reality tv can bring and waiting to see which brands can truly bring sounds to life. Looking to bring your brand to life on TikTok? Let’s grab a virtual coffee. #tiktok

As August draws to a close, it seems like a good time to reflect on the trend we lived this month: craft beer. Aside from an introduction to craft beer’s social media presence, blind beer tasting and an analysis of the beer’s highly gendered marketing, we’ve also done a round-up of the top specialist beer apps. Beer apps have seen a marked increase in social media mentions in 2017, with an increase of almost 20% from this time last year. How have these beer apps tapped (no pun intended) into the existing craft beer trend to maximise their success? Firstly, these apps have capitalised on the fact that craft beer culture naturally lends itself to social media. It’s more than just a commodity; most people’s beer-drinking habits have a strong social element. This couldn’t be indicated more clearly than by the fact that the average Twitter mentions of ‘beer’ and related topics increase from 637 to 1066 per day – that’s almost 70% – during weekends over one month, as well as a spike at Christmas (up 240%), New Year’s (224%) and St Patrick’s Day (175%). Craft beer is also a hobby for many people, which provides a growing market for more information-based, less social beer apps. UnTappd is the biggest player on the beer app scene, functioning as a beer-centric social network through which users can see what their friends are drinking and share their own favourite brews. With 7 million-plus users, UnTappd is a network to be reckoned with, and its social media impressions give us some telling data on the demographics of beer app users. Almost 90% of its 4,000-plus Facebook page ‘Likes’ come from men, suggesting that while a growing number of women are proud beer-drinkers, they are less likely to use it as a medium for socialising than men. 85% of those interested in UnTappd on Facebook are also interested in breweries – that’s compared to 60% which are interested in mainstream pubs – suggesting a user preference for craft beer over cheaper mass-produced brands. Not all beer apps put socialising front and centre, though. On the more information-based end of the spectrum are apps such as TapHunter (with about half a million downloads) and Next Glass (over 50,000 downloads). TapHunter uses location data to tell you where your next pint is coming from, while Next Glass help users find beers they may like based on their existing tastes. Meanwhile, Any Beer ABV tells you how much alcohol content is in your beer; BJCP Styles offers a beer-tasting education, and iBrewMaster helps you get started brewing your own beer. If all those sound a bit too serious for you, you might want to consider Beer?!, an app that lets you invite your friends out for beer with a single tap, or Pivo, which teaches you to order a beer in over 50 languages. Without a doubt, the beer app market has grown and diversified over the past year, with an app for everyone from the casual drinker to the craft ale connoisseur. Although the rise of craft beer has been partially driven by health and financial concerns, at the end of the day, beer-drinking is still a primarily social pastime for most. And with the diversifying craft beer market opening up to more and more demographics, it’s unsurprising that these apps’ popularity has continued to rise.

Seeing as I work in social media AND have a psychology degree it only seemed right that I should do a blog post on useful psychology theories and studies that apply to social media. Here are my top three: 1. Different personalities and social media uses – A study conducted at the University of Texas found that different personality traits is a predicting factor in how much someone uses social media and engages in online content. Their study revealed that in both men and women extraversion (being outgoing) and openness to experiences were positively related to increased social media use. Males high in emotional instability are also linked to increased social media usage (but not females). Learning: Producing content that appeals to very outgoing individuals will produce the best engagement rates. People high in extraversion are very positive and love excitement and variety. Content that produces intellectual curiosity and imagination will appeal to individuals high in openness to experiences. 2. Why people share things online: The social identity theory states that everyone has an intrinsic drive to become part of a group, as this boosts the individual’s self image. Researchers from the University of Queensland examined an active group of Facebook users to examine this principle in relation to social media. They found that sharing online content created positive feedback from peers which produced social validation and a greater sense of connectedness for the individual sharing the content. Learning: When individuals post anything online they are seeking comments, shares, likes. Being actively engaged with people you want to target will enhance their sense of belonging to your brand, and boost their self esteem. 3. How to promote online deals effectively: The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias that describes an individual’s tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered. This can affect how people perceive a ‘good’ deal. For example if the initial  price of a car is then negotiated down the car will seem more reasonable even if the price is still higher than the car is worth. Learning: When trying to promote a deal online through Twitter and Facebook it is important to emphasise the initial price of the product. It is also worth considering the sequence of the posts – promoting the offer after posts containing the full priced item. #onlinesharing #psychology #socialmedia

Influencer marketing. Influencer relations. Social influencers. Influencers (minus any modifiers). These words are used increasingly often in marketing circles. And for good reason: a shift to social distribution models for content and increased visibility (note, not necessarily trust) of peer recommendation has led to a renewed focus for the ‘benefit’ of brands. McKinsey reports that social recommendations drive, on average, 26% of purchases across all product categories. This can be somewhat puzzling for those who innocently ask questions such as “why is person X being labelled as an influencer?”, or “Is Influence a fixed commodity, then?”, or “How do you quantify influence?”. How have we got to this point, where the term ‘influencer’ is so revered, and yet the definition, identification and activation of, is so muddy? Well, first, the issue shares some similarities with that of “viral” (read past thoughts on what is a viral?). Secondly, it is best to start with a definition (my school Economics teachers would be delighted by this lifelong slavish adherence to essay structure): “ Capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself.” In practice, however, it is increasingly being used as a cover-all for “person with high public profile or claim to fame”. Yet this is only one type of influence (and in some cases, not even be influence, based on the definition above). Typically, in a social network sense, influence will be broken into the ability to elicit action (shares, clicks etc), the ability to shape message adoption, the ability to reach large numbers who passively endorse (likes etc), the ability to connect disparate groups thus driving diffusion of information, or the ability to access other key influencers (second degree of influence). The one thing which doesn’t meet that influence definition is reach (commonly follower counts) – the raw ability to put a message in front of lots of people. That’s not to say it isn’t important: clearly given two people who can generate action at the same rate, one would pick the person who gets to more eyeballs. But influence of any of the types above also has to be set in context of those you are seeking to reach – is the ‘influencer’ influential with that group? My personal twitter account has 3000+ followers, of whom the vast majority are engaged with me around marketing. Yet I frequently tweet about Oxford United. I am undoubtedly not influential at selling tickets for Oxford United, given (by my estimate) approximately four of my followers live in the Oxford area (even we season ticket holders struggle to envisage one travelling too far to enjoy League Two’s finest action). So, why has the term been so widely adopted as a shorthand for something which it doesn’t really cover? It’s difficult to quantifiably identify. One explanation is the merging (and subsequent confusion) of old and new. There’s been a shift to digital and social distribution models (e.g. Uber, Buzzfeed), which has created businesses of different types with fundamentally different methods to those which have gone before. The adoption of terminology from the new world to relabel elements of an older marketing and communications model, helps those struggling to either understand, or demonstrate their relevance to it. It may also be a blending of disciplinary backgrounds and terminology, as marketers converge. Those from more traditional publicity or brand backgrounds have used influencers in the role of tastemaker, or celebrity – the more traditional equivalents they traded in. But that ignores that the fundamental model has changed – in very, very few cases will “buying” one influencer do what is needed, unless one has a) a niche product with certain dominant influencers or b) a handful of celebs on a scale which makes them effective (e.g. Kim K). Otherwise one needs to use multiple (true) influencers, and utilise a network effect (albeit not as many as one might think – if you consider this case study around the popularity illusion study, which says the changes in the property of a network allows some ideas to spread but not others, rather than content). So, can we, Canute like, turn back the tides of imprecise linguistic adoption? No. But we can always reject the idea there is any such thing as a general, all-purpose influencer, predicated solely on having a lot of online reach. #instagrammers #bloggers #Influencermarketing #socialinfluencers #influencers #influence #youtubers

Becky, who joined over the summer as a Principal Consultant, shares why she’s become an Architect of Next. Yes, there are a lot of words there. But each one has vital importance. It encapsulates the incredible work the team at OneFifty do and what I’m hoping to bring to continue the extraordinary growth the business is seeing. Let’s break it down. User-centric: all great digital experiences put the end user first. Some would say it’s a hygiene factor - if you’re not addressing a need, motivation or desire, it fails. It’s pointless. Data-led: this is what sets us apart. We combine digital data analysis and insights with human behaviours (actually how people act on social) to really know our audiences, really know the platforms, to recommend strategies which work. (And we can prove they will work). Digital brand experiences: We believe in the power of brand to create differentiated experiences. To create conversation, to create meaningful and memorable moments that are unique to the brand and user connection. Experiences no one else can own. Rooted in the brand strategy, expressed via the brand visual and verbal identity. Creating: we make the stuff you see on the internet. We actually do. We concept, plan, design, craft and produce. Our Studio means we not only come up with great ideas, we execute them as well. Exceptional: because everything we create (and I mean everything) is exceptional. We set our bar high, because if we don’t, we fill the internet with more of the same, and who wants to hire a consultancy to do that? We understand what’s going to work, we make it to the highest standards and we connect our brands to their end users. And that’s why I’m excited to join the team. I’ve come from a large agency background where you never see the change, you never really get under the skin of your audience, and very very rarely do you get to touch real world execution. Every day at OneFifty we are producing fresh content that lives and breathes across digital channels. We are actively making those connections, designing those experiences, and having conversations with our end users. Pushing the boundaries of the expected, to cut through to our audiences. Expect to hear (and see!) a lot more from me!

So far, we’ve used social data to identify (and live) veganism , cycling , gin , health reset and gardening as consumer trends. This month marble is having its moment. There is a lot of marbling going on, and not just the stone material itself. From chopping boards to legging print, from nails to phone cases – bloggers are all over a little marble accessorising to chic-up their channels. This month, we’re going to investigate why marble became so popular on social… From looking through a few design bloggers (like  Hannah in the house ), we learned that marble kick-started among interior designers a few years back. But it didn’t take long until this stone took over a broader social audience. Marble has 2.4M hashtags on Instagram worldwide (96k UK est.), which is 5.5 times bigger than 'granite' and 1.3 times bigger than 'copper' (another material trend in past years). But it’s not just about a building material: let’s have a look at a few examples: The Glow Edit promoting Garnier’s Ultimate Blends in a marble bathroom vs Lolitamas promoting the same product with a bedding background. Amelia Freer’s lunch post on a marble table vs Gastroglam using a placemat . Brighton Keller travelling with her marble suitcase vs a black one . Brands also know about the aesthetically visual marble-effect: Adidas recently launched marble-styled gym wear. To promote this special product range, they worked with various influencers: our very own  Natalie Glaze , Twice The Health or Tally Rye , for example. Now the question arises: why are (especially) Instagrammer so keen on having marble in their images? The most popular marble used is the white marble. It works well for food items , beauty products or accessories , where the background raises the emotional value (e.g. designlife used in combination with 'marble'). This is probably one of the reasons why marble grew beyond interior designers and became popular among lifestyle blogging . A second and more prominent usage of marble on Instagram is its pattern (we estimate ¾ of Instagram posts tagged as such to be products with a marble design, not background). Home decor & furniture, nails and laptop/phone cases are the top products using a marble look ('marblenails' has 152,629 mentions, 'marblecase' has 145,981; home decor & furniture don’t have a specific hashtag, but can be found under the general marble hashtag). Among home decor & furniture, the marble kitchen, bathroom and tables are most noticeable. Those categories are mainly associated with luxury home or an elegant, aspirational lifestyle (e.g. #dreamhome , #parisianstyle ). As the recent adidas influencer campaign shows, marble is pushed by some big brands.  One of the latest makeup trends arising on Instagram are marble lipsticks . So, this month, we’re going to show you the most trendy marble accessoires on social, analyse the visual interest marble creates for your audience and speak to a few bloggers to learn what it means to marble-ize your images. #consumertrend #data #socialtrend

This month we have the hard task of participating in a new social trend…Gin! To kick start our gin month we took a trip to the Beefeater distillery in Kennington. We arrived at the typically English 1950s factory. The building oozed with the history of gin and formed a perfect setting for the gin tour. We first entered a mini museum detailing the history of gin in Britain. It took us on a journey starting from the birth of the gin craze in the 18th Century, to the current day. We were then greeted by our lovely tour guide Rosie. She introduced us to the nine different botanicals that go into Beefeater gin: juniper, angelica root, angelica seeds, coriander seeds, liquorice, almonds, orris root, seville oranges, and lemon peel. You get the opportunity to touch and smell each one. My biggest surprise was the addition of fruits and nuts (practically one of your 5 a day!). Rosie then went onto explain the origins of Beefeaters and its name. Beefeaters can be traced back to James Burrough who started the distillery in the 1960s in Chelsea. The Beefeater birth cost a grand total of £400! The Beefeater brand gained its name from the Tower of London guards. To this day, they still send them a bottle every year. Rosie then led us to the gin production site. As we entered the distillery it was striking how quiet it was. Where were all the workers? Rosie went on to  explain that only 4 people made the 10,000 litres a day of Beefeater Gin, with only 4 stills. There gin is distilled for 24 hours with the 9 botanicals. This is where it gets a bit tricky, as each of the botanicals release their flavour at different times. As they can’t have their employees drinking 80% proof throughout the day, the only way they can tell when the botanicals are ready is to smell the gin. This is done by the 4 employees, with the head smeller Desmond (a.k.a the ‘Nose’). The ability to smell the different botanicals takes years to develop. Their sense of smell is also tested every 6 months: so becoming a gin smeller seems to be a little harder than I first thought! With the additional drawback of not getting to taste the gin… Working within social media, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have a little look at what Beefeater is doing here. Globally, over the past year, Beefeater gin has over 9.7K mentions with the US and UK leading the way in terms of volumes. This generates a total of 33.7 million impressions. The conversation is led by using the gin in combination with fruity cocktails, and of course a G&T. The boys seem to be dominating the conversation. There is a popular use of the hashtag 'spoton' – and now I can see why! Of course no Gin tour would be complete without a gin and tonic. The gin tasted all the better knowing the process and hard work behind it. All in all it was a great trip full of history and gin. The gin craze which first swept 18th century London is re-emerging and I can see why. The complexity in flavour combined with the expertise of master smellers creates the perfect evening drink… or even lunchtime! #socialtrend #Socialdata #gin #trends

This week we see the start of the annual Chelsea Flower Show. The most prestigious gardening show of the year in the UK and the premier event in the gardeners’ calendar. We’ve looked at who, how and what people are talking and sharing when it comes to social media. Last year there was 126,000 tweets about the show in May, generating 432 million impressions. To put this in context Royal Ascot had 160,000 mentions and 570 million impressions – 23% smaller.  The conversation around Chelsea is driven by a domestic audience, with 81% of all tweets coming from the UK. The US was the second largest (9%) followed by Australia (2.7%). On the gender split, it was slightly female skewed with 58% – 42% bias. It’s a similar story on Instagram hashtags affiliated with Royal Ascot are 25% higher than hashtags affiliated with The Chelsea Flower Show. So what are people talking about? At a whopping 67%, the majority of the posts on Twitter were retweets. It does show the wide appeal of Chelsea in terms of sharing content beyond the, relatively, small number who get tickets to go. The most popular garden talked about on twitter last year was not a medal winner instead it was the striking 5000 poppies garden by Phillip Johnson. This garden was featured in 8% of tweets about the show last year. This garden had a strong emotional message and combined it with striking visual imagery it is no wonder this did so well on social media Instagram shows that the flowers and gardens speak for themselves on social – just 20% of the content features people in the shot. What we tend to see at big occasional events like this one is a high volume of selfies as people want to be ‘seen’ at the event on social. The Royals are a major pull factor for the event with 10% of tweets last year mentioning The Royal Family in some way and three of the top nine posts on instagram featured Kate Middleton. When it comes to who is actually talking about The Chelsea Flower Show, though, TV stars featured heavily. Rosie Fortesque, Fearne Cotton and Mark Francis all made the top most influential accounts talking about the show. Gardening celebrities were surprisingly absent from our list, with only Ben Fogle featuring. The fact that “new” media stars such as Lily Pebbles and Amelia Liana were talking about the Chelsea Flower show highlights the breadth of the audience that is interested in this event. The Chelsea Flower Show has a great combination of British heritage and engaging source material that mean that this event will continue to be popular on social media for the foreseeable future. Content around the show is created and shared most prolifically when it combines the visual aspect (of flowers in this case), with an emotional response for the consumer. And that’s what gets people sharing on social, it’s not rational… #gardener #rhs #gardening #chelsea #trends

As part of this month’s gardening trend, which we see thriving on social, I had the delightful job to look more closely into which ‘flowers’ are driving interest. So here’s our ranking of the Top 10 Flowers discussed on social. To kick off the research, and narrow down the flowers we are going to analyse, we used a variety of sources to establish long lists of the most popular flowers in retail and cultural terms. To account for marketing biases, we validated this list with plants that The Gardener’s World featured in 2016/17, and additionally added Dahlias and Daffodils. We also adjusted (excluded) for key events that would skew the analysis, like Valentine’s or Mother’s Day – in othr words, when flowers are used as gifts (rather than in their natural environment). The gardening aspect (i.e. explicitly discussing the growing by consumers) is rather small in absolute terms, by volume – however there’s an implicit behaviour to note. The interest in horticulture is at its full bloom when it comes to the beauty and perfection of flowers. People post a picture (of flowers) and say “look how lovely this place looks”, but what they actually demonstrate is their view “oh these flowers look nice”. That being said, Roses are clearly winning our Top 10 Social Flower Ranking (this ranking is based on relative mention volumes across Twitter and Instagram. We suspect YouTube to be a big deal when it comes to Gardening DIY, however due to platform API limitations, it’s not included in this analysis): The obvious point in this table is the importance of a flower’s visual aspect: Roses, Lilies and Hydrangea, for instance. Their classic, exotic and expensive look and feel resonate particularly well with an Instagram audience. We also need to take into account that some flowers have a longer flowering seasoning, which affects posting volumes. Whereas roses flower 9 months a year, daffodils have only 4 weeks. Unwinding the variety of flowers on social, we dug further into each flower’s related content. The results show some distinct opportunities to branch out (forgive all the puns). Among all the different flowers we looked at, Lavender features the least amount of specific gardening content compared to it’s overall conversation on social (est. 0.5%). Beauty products and gifting are dominating, instead. Similar is Fuchsia. People talk about the pink colour in combination with beauty and clothing products, but relatively speak less about horticulture. And last, but not least Daffodils – The feel good flower. Happiness emerges across all flowers, but a positive tone of voice really lives up in the Daffodil conversation, e.g. “Iced coffee in the sun yeah 'daffodils' 'sunnymood'" (we estimate Daffodils to be 9 times more often used in a happy/ sunshine context than Hydrangea or 1.4 times more often than Tulips for example). When it comes to emoji flowers, however, within the flower conversation, the Sunflower emoji is more popular – just slightly ahead by 2 percentage points across the overall Twitter conversation, but 3 times more prominent than the Tulip emoji (not every flower we looked at has a specific emoji, however still surprising and a good indicator of the power of positivity we can find on social). Lastly we looked at the demographics – and it’s relatively evenly distributed, with 55% female, 45% male conversation. Next up in our analysis? Chelsea Garden Show… #gardening #consumertrends #socialtrends #flowers #trends

The consumer trend we’re living this month – identified by social data – is gardening and as part of it we’re interviewing some prominent people in the gardening community. First up was the man behind the RHS’ social media channels, Ian Reynolds, now we’ve sat down with Mr Plant Geek, otherwise known as Michael Perry. As the “ultimate plant geek”, he’s made numerous TV appearances, is a speaker for the RHS but more notably has thousands of social media fans following his work and asking advice. As he says, if you love plants, you’ll love him. So, read on… What got you into gardening? Spending time with my grandparents when I was young – from five! At that point, they’re a lot more interesting than your parents and I wanted to do what they did. I had a natural interest in nature and gardening but what really kicked it off was their love of growing plants and flowers, and being at exhibitions. From that point, I used every opportunity to do something related to gardening and expanding my knowledge. I was selling plants via mail order via my own herb nursery when I was just 12. It was there that I went on to learn a lot about marketing and how to talk to people about plants in a way that they understood, got excited about and ultimately bought. Have you ever thought of doing something else? I haven’t, I’m not sure what else I’d be good at! I think you should do what comes naturally to you, gardening is that for me. I am very lucky to have been able to turn it into a career – that’s not always the case. What is the importance of non-traditional gardening faces? Having a variety of knowledgeable people who are prominent in the gardening community is important to inspire different people. I’ve been considered quite different in my approach – typically younger and more forward-thinking – which has made me get noticed more. Although   as gardening has grown and become more ‘trendy’, I’ve probably become a more acceptable face! I fit in more – although I’ve never tried to do things differently, I just do what I do! I would add, that it’s not just about being of the moment, you do need experience to back it up. I’m horticulturally trained which ensures I’ve got the substance! Have you seen it grow? Yes definitely. Predominantly around indoor plants – it’s the natural place to start and lots of people don’t have gardens. Something I try and champion more is window boxes, anyone can do it and it’s your ticket to outdoor gardening. The problem is people don’t think about it in the first place and there’s no handy universal window box that just fits. Looking at gardening more generally, it has become less complicated and stuffy, which has helped grow its popularity. It was very hierarchical, but less so now – you don’t have to know how to prune 20 different shrubs to be recognised! People are more likely to have a go – and I’d really encourage them to do so. It’s important we protect the history and knowledge of horticulture but without compromising on its appeal. I do think the bubble might burst with house plants though. We tend to get obsessed on one thing for a couple of years and then hate it because it becomes ‘uncool’. But we’ll see. You’re well followed on social, how has that played a role in building your personal brand? I don’t think I’ve really thought about it in that way, I just do what I do. That said, my social following is used as a proxy for credibility. The reason I use it is because it gives me direct contact with the customer – that’s the real benefit. I can give them advice but also get that advice back – I ask them what flower shows I should be going to that I don’t already know, for example. It keeps me much better connected to the industry and it connects you to amazing and interesting people all the time. My channels all serve a slightly different purpose, Instagram is great for being visual and showing off different plants. Twitter is where I can showcase my work and jump into conversations with all sorts of people – although it’s getting a lot more cluttered, making that harder to do. Facebook is great for showing my work in more depth and getting discussions going with followers. It’s taken me awhile to decide what role my website has, but what I’m aiming at is the ‘Buzzfeed of plants’ – it’s almost there! I want to draw people in and really enjoy their time there. Are Gardening YouTubers underrepresented? I think they are. I’d love to focus on this but I have to think about what I spend my time on. Gardening is under-represented. It’s hugely seasonal so that makes it difficult to sustain content throughout the year. To build a credible social following with great content requires a lot of investment. What’s your favourite gardening account on social? Noughticulture by Alice Vincent, who also writes for The Telegraph. Gently hipster, but the way she delivers content and information is very accessible and every day. She has made some lovely how to videos about basic things that come across beautifully. I also love Dale Dixon who works at the Botanical garden in Sydney. He gets a lot of everyday interest on social, which is amazing for a botanical garden. It shows how connected the world is now – you can learn about gardening from anyone in the world. What are your favourite brands in gardening? There’s a new compost called Black Magic, from Scotts, which I love – I’m doing some work with them now. It appeals to a more hipster audience without alienating the traditional gardener. Seed Ball are doing some great stuff – particularly engaging people on social. I would say on asking for gardening advice, do ask the right people. And don’t go for the first answer on Google – it can be completely wrong and do more harm than good. What are your top tips for those new to gardening Keep it small, keep it basic. Don’t get overwhelmed and have fun! And remember, plants won’t (and don’t need to) last forever. We tend to have an odd opinion in the UK that plants shouldn’t die. Why can’t we use them in a more relaxed and disposable way? I’ve been doing quite a bit of lecturing in Japan to students. They cram amazing things into a container designed to least 2-3 weeks – and they have fun! You don’t want to waste money on plants but don’t get too focused on the value either. Also, realise that gardening means many different things – it doesn’t have to be digging all day. It can be, but often isn’t. Just have a go! #gardener #gardening #garden #plantgeek #socialtrends

Our #ArchitectsofNext series focuses on people in other organisations creating what comes next, but also introduces our very own architects… Design and data. Beyond the alliteration, they can often be seen as worlds apart. Not for Cat O’Brien, who is taking her design background into exploring the world of digital engagement. Her experience reads like many people’s dream: Manchester United, London 2012, Saracens rugby, and most recently the Baku European Games. From dressing football stadiums for the world’s cameras, to working on matchday experiences for the most passionate rugby fans, approaching everything with a keen sense of what the visual experience is has made her focus on the user. So, when it comes to applying that to the world of digital engagement, she sees exciting possibilities, but acknowledges that not everyone regards social media, in particular, the same way: “Instagram has the ability to make anyone a photographer. Some people complain that means a lot of poor quality shots of food. But Instagram can make you a photographer – how exciting is that? The democratising power of the level playing field giving everyone with talent access is incredible. I see it instead as an exciting way to move the world to become a visual, inspiring place. Anything which encourages and enables more people to utilise a creative outlet is a good thing, in my opinion. “It’s that ability to create new ways of working, creating what comes next, with a fairer playing field for brand and influencer collaborations which I’m excited to be exploring. The creativity that gives rise to can be infectious – because social media is relatively new as a creative medium means there’s more opportunity to be destructive and transformational.” Taking a career which has focussed on the creative and visual, to approaching things from a strategic, data-led perspective is the challenge which she’s embracing. “The power and possibility of the accessible information and data behind the social media apps that I have become so familiar with, and how this accessible data can shape my approach to understanding different approaches to creative challenges in future. Applying that to human behaviour, and developing a strategic understanding of things like how we can make the ‘everyday beautiful’ through Instagram, or encourage people to seek trusted recommendations from a peer is really motivating.” Looking at the sports sector, which she knows well, surprisingly she sees it as ripe for disruption. “The technology on the pitch is ahead of the pace of adoption in many (not all) marketing and comms teams. Beyond the obvious names (Nike, RedBull etc), as a category sport has not yet explored the full potential of digital technology as far as one might have expected”. Fusing design thinking with effective use of behavioural data points to the sort of human-focussed thinking which will create what comes next. Top Twitter follow: @saracens Top Instagram follow: @cjhendry Top blog subscribe: Psycle’s Inspire Productive habit: Sunday afternoon cooking sessions for the week ahead Unproductive habit: Cancelling gym classes minutes after booking them Favourite brand: & other stories #design #social #socialmedia #sport #ArchitectsofNext

Ever wondered where those accounts get all those followers from? Why, despite the huge follower count, they don’t get much engagement? How those start up businesses get so many followers, so fast? What is that freelance consultant doing who has treble the followers of industry bigwigs? Yep, they bought their followers. Yes, for those of you sitting agog, one can really buy a bunch of followers. Well, we say that, but the chances are that many of them will be fake accounts, run by a single person, automatically. Either way, you can buy a bunch of accounts, who will follow yours, and boost that shiny number next to your name. The ‘why would you do this’ is clear – setting up, and growing, new accounts is really hard going. Who wants to follow an account with 7 followers? It’s hardly a glowing endorsement. There’s a reason buskers always put a load of change in their guitar case – popularity breeds popularity (attachment theory in social networks). What did we do? So, we decided to explore the reality of buying followers by doing it. Not on our OneFifty account, but on a dummy one. It’s worth noting, before we outline how this works, that Twitter are officially against the purchase of followers (albeit limited efforts appear to be made to police it). We would never do it for ourselves, or clients. The account we’re using for the purpose began with two followers. After all, however ugly the duckling, it has two parents who think it’s beautiful. Although actually we don’t think this is beautiful. We gazed at in admiration and horror, as we ponder creating Frankenstein. Surveying the field of potential vendors of twitter followers is a depressing exercise. We chose to stop after the first two pages of results for “buy Twitter followers”. Our faith in digital marketers keen to make a quick buck had sunk lower than when we accidentally did a similar exercise for “search marketing gurus”. Within that time, however, we discovered a mini cottage industry. One significant enough to have at least two sites dedicated to reviewing the quality of this murky pool of vendors. It also demonstrated the way people come across these services – I’ve rarely seen a site with such a high degree of search keyword optimisation. How do they work? It seemed there were a few points of differentiation between the services: Whether they required your password Whether they guaranteed your follower numbers for a minimum period of time Whether you could select the territory and language your new followers were based in Whether they were ‘real’ people you were buying Nearly all show an awareness of the issue that you breach Twitter’s terms of service by using such services (Twitter prohibits one from buying or selling followers, and likewise for account ownership). They address it head on, in many cases. Few offer much reassurance, however. One who stood out for their, erm, probity in this respect was Devumi. Pricier than their rivals, they team up buying followers with buying other social actions at the same time (liking, retweeting etc), which they claim reduces the chances of Twitter suspending your account. Now I suspect that’s true – Twitter will be using some form of algorithm to detect accounts buying followers, as well as accounts which are within such “bot networks”. Here’s Terence showing how one can identify such networks. One of the dimensions in Twitter’s detection algorithm will almost certainly be other signs of “real” account activity and popularity alongside the rapidly rising follower count. Surprisingly there’s less consensus than one would expect on pricing, given this is an entirely online marketplace, and everyone is getting their leads via organic and paid search. Using 10k follower “packages” as the benchmark, the cheapest we found was the marvellously branded “Buy Twitter love”  at £24.99, through to Devumi topping the scales at $99 (they really are the Rolls Royce of this situation). Most surreal is the confusingly named “Buy 1000 followers”, who offer a million dollar package for $2500. I’m unsure why anyone would hand over such a large amount of money to such an unconvincing looking service, but anyway… Not full of confidence, we opted for “greedier social”. Toward the cheaper end at $39.99 for 10 k followers, they won our business through their acceptable copywriting and lack of requirement for the account password. Plus they took payment via PayPal, unlike some competitors who seemed to have built their own payments systems. I kid you not. We decided to start small, buying a thousand followers to test the water. The account we’re using, it is worth noting, had been registered a considerable time before, and we’d taken care to send a few tweets before we started buying, to give it an air of credibility we thought might stop Twitter’s ‘bad actor’ sniffer dogs from finding us immediately. Did it work? After the payment had cleared, our followers started flying in. After 20 minutes we spotted our first ‘egg’ – an account without even a photo. Oddly for a service offering UK-based accounts, we found a surprising amount of Russian names. It did, however, deliver the promised numbers (plus a few hundred). What’s worth noting is that, 40 days later, only about 50% remained. Contractually the followers are only promised for 30 days. That, combined with some accounts being suspended by Twitter (for obvious reasons!) meant residual numbers are lower. So, what’s the lesson? Unsurprisingly, this is a shady space, with shady providers. It’s also ridiculously straightforward. But, having done it, accounts with a lot of fake followers are rarely only using that tactic to sustain their newly acquired numbers. Auto-following as one example, is clearly playing a part. In this case, knowledge is power – it’s not a route we’d advise on for growing your channel… #followers #Twitter