Research has found that about 20 per cent of users return to an app after the first day they downloaded it but that the average app has a less than five per cent chance of being used for more than 30 days. Furthermore, around 20 per cent of the free apps available in the Android Market have not even clocked 100 downloads.

This is why creativity and engagement is key. Identifying a niche that will entertain, educate or ease the life of the consumer is vital to its success. But in this increasingly crowded marketplace, both creativity and engagement are crucial to differentiate and activate demand but it can come in different forms – from a quirky idea to impressive use of technology.

Take for example, the augmented reality (AR) app called Lungs designed to show smokers the damage caused by cigarettes. Users can control settings to reflect their own experience based on factors such as their age and how many cigarettes they smoke each day; these all impact on both the visual representation and ‘time taken for lungs to recover’ statistic.

Or how about the BeerGut Fitness app, the calorie check book that will assist you in avoiding the dreaded beer gut telling you whether you’ve earned a drink or need to exercise?

With NHS waiting lists growing daily and falling disposable income making private healthcare more unaffordable, combined with an increasingly informed patient base, the market is ripe for the countless new apps and devices actively targeting consumers keen on preventing, examining, improving and managing their health. So the question remains, is this a route more healthcare companies should be focusing in on in 2012?
In a world where audiences are publicly disclosing increasing amounts of personal information about their lives on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, health apps are becoming more relevant and increasingly invaluable to companies wishing to have a social media presence. However, it is clear that without a healthy dose of engaging creativity many of these apps are destined to fall by the wayside.

* (Source: MobiHealthNews, September 2011).

So are charities needing to become more creative in how they attract donations? Certainly, the recent collaboration between Dulux and UNICEF, which invited people to own a colour, is a brilliant example of a fresh and more importantly engaging approach to fundraising which we mentioned in a recent blog.

In a bid to make it easy for people to donate, we are seeing more and more charities turning to social media sites which can be linked directly to sponsorship platforms such as JustGiving, which help supporters to collect funds and eliminate the hassle of filling out sponsor forms.  In fact, this has helped 13 million people raise over £930 million for more than 12000 charities since 2001. Unsurprisingly, Facebook and Twitter have been most successful in driving these donations – in September 2011 it was reported that over 27% of all JustGiving’s on line donations were driven directly through Facebook and the highest value donations were received through Twitter.

So the question is in tough times are charities the first to suffer or is creativity and engagement the key to success? Well, last month’s high profile ‘Children in Need’ campaign seems to refute this having raised a record-breaking £26 million.  The question is was it the content that drove the rise in donations or was it the integration of donations via social media and texting alongside the traditional that broadened the scope and made it all so much easier to give.  ‘Meaningful’, multi-channel, or a combination of both, is that the way to improve charities fortunes?

Back in July we blogged on the launch of Google+. We highlighted how it could offer an opportunity to reconsider how we share our lives online and offer the potential to take a different path altogether. Since then the social network has opened up to the masses and only last week rolled out company pages across the social network . To this end, any business, group or entity can create a profile. Sound familiar?

Skepticism aside (for now), we’ve been reassured that the site offers some new “unique features” thereby enticing company presence. Save the Children, BBC News, the Daily Mail (and good old Madge!) are some that have already delved in and among the first to create profiles. In this light, what does this mean for brand’s social media strategies? Do they need to expand and integrate all things Google within their programmes or can they choose to ignore, but at risk of missing an increasingly influential trick?

Over the coming months, it’ll be interesting to see if there’s collective movement across industries from key competitors, such as Facebook, or if marketing leads will allow brands to co-exist and evolve across an increasing number of channels.

Google’s global conquest is well underway but with a proportion of companies (pharma especially) only just getting into the swing of things with pre-existing social networks such as Facebook, are we ready to take on a full-blown affair with +1? Discuss…

With an estimated 2 billion internet users worldwide, an error of judgement can be broadcast globally in a matter of seconds. No one will easily forget the Daily Mail’s reporting on the ‘guilty’ – or not ‘not guilty’ – Amanda Knox, that in its rush to break the story first, broadcasted an inaccurate report to the world. Unfortunately this kind of action just adds further collateral to the current Leveson inquiry (but that’s a whole other debate altogether).

Just this week, we’ve seen another ‘oopsy’ moment when freelance foreign correspondent Rob Crilly’s irate tweets to the Telegraph editor over his modified article, were automatically posted on the Telegraph website. Rob’s actions remind us that the World Wide Web is aptly named – our online actions are available for the world to see in a flash. Despite both these errors being swiftly removed from the public domain they have stimulated widespread reporting and show that online mediums allow the ever watching world to see mistakes which print media never could.

Despite all this, the likes of Twitter provide a resource many journalists cannot now live without and figures from the fourth annual Digital Journalism Study found nearly half (47 per cent) use Twitter as a source. It has revolutionised the way they work and instantaneously broadcast information. It has in fact proven to be mutually beneficial for both journalists and the audience, so like many friendships, they may have fallings out once in a while but they will almost always kiss and make up and come back for more.

Under normal circumstances these two parties wouldn’t have much in common. But, the paint brand has teamed up with the world’s leading children’s charity to offer people the opportunity to buy from a selection of 16.7 million colours – the number the average computer, smartphone and tablet can display. Their ultimate aim is to have members of the public name each of these for at least £1 to raise money for children and young people in over 190 countries across the world. Funds will be used to help UNICEF continue to fulfill their ongoing goal of ensuring that children’s right to be educated, healthy, protected and treated fairly is a reality.

What we have here is a project that’s not only unique and visually stimulating but empathic and thought-provoking. It hits the nail on the head and in a time where the value of online networks is often questioned, clearly demonstrates the ripple effect of social media and power of the masses – over £60,000 has already been raised in only a couple of days.

Working towards £16.7 million is no small feat, celebrity endorsement or not. R68 G25 B117 – that’s us. How about you? Go on, buy a colour and help save a child’s life.

Well…clearly you’d have to be multilingual in order to understand the opening to this post (unfortunately, some of us aren’t that lucky!). And it’s not just being shortsighted (and seriously needing a pair of glasses!) that accounts for having taken the wrong turning. AND, sometimes building flat pack isn’t ‘as easy as 1, 2, 3′.

The above are all obstacles that we’ve no doubt been faced with, probably on more than one occasion. However, some barriers are often not so obvious – lack of understanding is bound to arise where there’s a lack of clarity and this occurring in the online social space is no anomaly.

Today marks the start of Social Media Week – a global network of conferences which aim to connect hundreds of thousands of people every year to advance our understanding of social media’s role in society.

And so we begin…social media – the term itself is thrown around endlessly and seems to take on an eclectic mix of different meanings depending on who’s talking about what. At a basic level it encapsulates two-way communication, ie turning web-based technologies into interactive dialogue.

We all know about the huge numbers joining social networks across the globe, users having a common desire to share thoughts and seek information on topics of mutual interest within a familiar environment. As an industry, we have a responsibility to sensibly share advances across medical fields that will ultimately help improve patient care. Social networks provide us with an opportunity to more effectively communicate in a bespoke way that resonates. But when doing so, we need to step away from ambiguity and provide tailored information that is relevant, understandable and digestable to those at the receiving end, be it patients, healthcare professionals, or anyone else for that matter.

Collectively, we may be relatively new to the social media realm and still navigating our way but the basic principles of traditional communication methods (and, of course, the need to be code compliant) still apply – it’s simply our vehicle that’s novel.

So next time we put fingers to keyboard, carefully consider not only who we’re communicating with and how we can contribute but more so, the language/visual style and specific words/imagery we use to participate in discussion. Let’s leave out the need for a twenty-page instruction manual, continue to work away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach and learn from those industries that are respecting individuality and, in doing so, getting it right. To my knowledge, Starbucks have never turned away those who are partial to an extra hot, wet, soya, sugar-free vanilla latte.

The idea of customising viral videos to individual users is not new. MySpace ran a video in which your MySpace or Facebook profile picture becomes a framed picture Alisha Keys sings love songs to, or that 50 cent places on his wall. It was a big internet hit.

The return on investment for Old Spice will be phenomenal. Although we might be talking about a completely different setup for healthcare, there is still potential here. It’s all about thinking a bit laterally, being brave enough to become slightly detached from brand and product and create positive perceptions about an idea or subject.  More please…

Although this may be old news for some, it should be emphasised that the insight and information which is shared between users on social media sites about healthcare trends, behaviours and needs of consumers is invaluable to companies who are planning to create a social media strategy of their own.

What is sometimes forgotten in the excitement of a new campaign is to actively ‘listen’ to consumers to find out what they really want. Just as marketers conduct qualitative group research, public health campaigners implement needs analyses, so must pharma follow suit and understand what the realtime needs of a social media campaign. The bonus of cyber space is that this insight is available right in front of us saved on the biggest most indelible archive ever!

It sounds simple enough but it is essential that listening encompasses identifying, monitoring and analysing targeted social media communities. Most importantly it is essential that this data and information actually influences the business agenda rather than the pre-defined business objective defining the social media strategy. A good old dose of chicken and egg then really.