Chinwag Team's blog

There’s been a lot of negative coverage this morning regarding Twitter’s latest financial results. The focus has been on the poor profit figures (the company posted a net loss for the full year of $645 million against revenues of $665 million), but what numbers did the social network reveal that might be of interest to those brands using it to engage consumers and customers?

Youth Marketing Strategy run by Voxburner is back for a fourth year, bringing together the best minds, top brands and edgiest agencies involved in the fast-moving world of youth marketing.

This post was written by Mat Morrison, Social Media Strategy Director at Starcom MediaVest Group and originally appeared on his blog. You can find him @mediaczar and his evil alter ego, @evilczar.

Like most other modern human beings (and I’m including you in this), I’m naturally bad at prioritising my life. There are all sorts of psychological processes that — while nicely suited to living in the early hominid moment — aren’t much use when it comes to mid- and long-term planning in the modern world. Wikipedia maintains a handy-dandy list of the resulting cognitive biases that’s worth perusing from time to time.

PsychUp is back! This first gathering of 2014 takes place on 4th Feb at 6pm and it’s going to be a great way to start your Psych journey for the year with optimisation maestro, Craig Sullivan and colour psychologist, Karen Haller.

In addition to presentations, there’s drinks, snacks and plenty of time for networking and chat. Early-bird tickets have almost sold out, so don’t wait too long to book.

Digital businesses can exploit real and lucrative opportunities in healthcare. That’s the message of a new half-day event from IC tomorrow.

Taking place in London on 23 January 2014, it will focus on ways of accessing data, showing routes to market and how to find like-minded collaborators.

The briefest of brief blogs to kick off 2014. Besides we like pictures of fireworks. So far we're doing well on our resolutions: exercise more, no chocolate, no booze, clean desk, plan some crazy-ass, mould-breaking events and collaborations.

A huge thank you to everyone who attended events, contributed to discussions and supported Chinwag in 2013. We're scheming and planning a range of diverse and exciting plans for 2014, but most are still hush-hush, here's some hints...

More of us are online, but we feel pretty meh about it

 The number of Britons going online has soared in the last decade, but the majority do so without enthusiasm.

That’s the conclusion of the latest report from Oxford Internet Surveys of our national internet use, which identifies five groups:

• Cyber-moderates, who use the internet but had no strong feelings either for or against it (37%)
• Adigitals, who felt the internet was taking over their lives and invading their privacy (14%)

The Growth Hacking methodology uses technology to quickly build and develop a business, utilising digital tactics for market research and marketing purposes. Despite one wag describing 'growth hacking' as the Shoreditch term for 'marketing', last week's SME Growth Hack event explored how to hack rapid business growth.

Employing cloud-based tools for management, Growth Hackers make the most of current innovations to allow entrepreneurs to test their business and change it rapidly. Raj Kotecha, MD of Creative Content Agency sat down with Chinwag's Dylan Fuller to discuss how to 'Hack the Global Marketing Platforms'. Here's the video:

Social media speaker, author, wine buff and generally excitable marketing man-about-town Gary Vaynerchuk hits London for VaynerWorld, to launch his new book, 'Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook', on 12th December (10% discount for Chinwaggers)

In typically understated fashion Gary said, "I'm basically going put on the greatest event in London history! I don't give a crap about The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Clash or Beckham or whoever, not the single best business book event, the single... greatest... event!"

With a week between us and last week’s SME Growth Hack, now is a good time to reflect on what was learned, covered and uncovered. To do this, let’s have a quick look at the four pillars of the event.

If you were under the impression hacking was dodgy business - think again. Growth hacking is the rapidly expanding practice of discovering creative options to traditional marketing.

This coming week, on Nov 21, us at Chinwag and UKTI are excited to partner with Real Business, the UK’s first magazine for entrepreneurs and SMEs, to host SME Growth Hack - Build. Promote. Sell. Inspire. With Real Business aiming to aid business leaders in their day-to-day activities and decision- making, they are a great addition to any SME related events and we are happy to have them onboard.

What on earth is that in the picture? A biscuit? A sponge? Some kind of ancient artefact? A new type of Copper that's 10x more effective at cooling computers? Yup, that's right, the last one.

Developed by researchers at Liverpool University and brought to market by Versarien. CEO and Co-Founder Neill Ricketts tells the incredible story of startup to stock market in 18 months at Thursday's SME Growth Hack in London. Got your ticket?

Want to grow your business? Spending too much time working in the business and not enough developing it?

Help is at hand with next week's SME Growth Hack day (Thu 21 Nov), which thanks to support from UK Trade & Investment is free to attend.

The day includes a programme of expert speakers from Market Invoice, Eventbrite, Constant Contact, Duedil, Alibaba, Startup Britain and more.

Fancy joining a small, but frenetically busy team doing some interesting work at the forefront of the digital media and marketing world for a 3 month paid marketing internship?

You do? You know someone who does? Well, that's marvellous, read on...

Last night we hosted the first Chinwag Psych: PsychUp, which was part of the Festival of Marketing (8-10 Oct). The evening was a great success and Emma from The Blue Ballroom wrote this lovely blog all about it.

The next PsychUp will be hosted on Tuesday 12th November. Tickets sell out fast, so get yours while you can.