The hallowed signs of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are now a must-have on any integrated project but the truth is, they cause something of an issue for me. What's the point in spending ages finding the perfect, colourful, vibrant and powerful images for your presentation when your social media section can only be described as, well, a little blue?

Actually, make that a lot of blue. When you think about it, the vast majority of internet and technology brand logos are blue - facebook, Intel, Wordpress, LinkedIn, Twitter, Outlook, Window's Explorer, HP, Samsung, Dell, Paypal, the list goes on and on.

But what does this mean?

Going by gender stereotypes, is the internet a man?

Is the use of blue meant to trick us into thinking we are staring at a calm, serene ocean rather than a million or more pixels on a screen?

Could it be that boy band Blue had a more lasting effect than any of us ever believed possible?

It seems that blue is the colour of progress, innovation, trust, communication and sharing, clarity and efficiency which says two things to me:

1)      We should expect to see a whole lot more blue branding as web-based companies continue to burst onto our screens

2)      The internet surely cannot be a man

Only kidding!  For a more eloquent account of why the web is blue, take a look at this rather marvellous interactive infographic called the Coolness of Blue in Web Design and if you are a brand, ask yourself this: what does your blue say about you?

By @Fablett

Carolann: Stars Wars fans across the country will, I'm sure, be very excited that the latest edition of the sci-fi fantasy series is to be filmed right here in Britain.

I can't say I've ever got that in to it (although I did enjoy the Family Guy 'Blue Harvest' parody), but what got my interest was the fact that this news was announced by Chancellor George Osborne… on Twitter.

Even more interestingly, he posted the news at 9.50pm on a Friday night, which must have played havoc with the TV news teams getting ready to air 10 minutes later! What I think it shows though is the shift in where we get our news from.

More and more people are getting their news updates from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook simply because the rapid nature of them means that events can be reported on as they happen.

For instance, I first heard about the death of Margaret Thatcher on Twitter and then continued to hear about every Tom, Dick and Harry's opinion on it through the same channel so that I didn't need to read any articles or see any news coverage to know what everyone was saying on the subject.

Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't still value in traditional journalism but as we move to an increasingly digital, social world I wonder how this will change in the future?

Alvin: Meanwhile, last week, official news reached twitter of Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement as the manager of Manchester United football club, after 26 years at the helm.

Within just eight minutes Man Utd's press office tweet of "Sir Alex Ferguson retires #thankyousiralex" became the No 1 global trend, receiving 100,000 mentions within one hour. When I read this figure for the first time, I thought that my eyesight had worsened (even more) overnight.

According to data collected by Twitter, Margaret Thatcher's death saw a million tweets in the following four hours. Sir Alex broke that, easily. Within the first hour of the initial tweet going live, the announcement reached heights of an astonishing 1.4m interactions, maths might not be my strong point but even I can work that out to be almost 400 tweets per second!

Even as an Arsenal fan, I appreciate the career that Sir Alex Ferguson has forged, and I am in no way surprised at the sheer volume of people that interacted with this recent news. Thatcher and Ferguson are both icons for various reasons, but I believe more noise was made about Sir Alex's retirement due to the younger generation's presence on social media.

Thought that was impressive?

The announcement of the choice of Jorge Mario Bergoglio to be the new pope earlier this year received substantially more mentions than Thatcher and Ferguson combined! Over 7m tweets were written which, in the words of Charles Arthur, demonstrates "that while football may be a religion for many, it still has a little way to catch up with the officially recognised ones, at least on social media."

OBVIOUSLY, the majority of people realise the positives of using social media, for business and social use, I merely wanted to educate the few out there who sit on the fence, to the insurmountable reach of Twitter.

@CarolannG_85

@TeeLuck87

But the one that really stood out for me was the front page of today's The Sun newspaper - this is the sort of advertising and brand association that companies would pay a fortune for, and it poses the question as to whether Becks (the brewers) is celebrating the best free publicity of all time or whether this was a carefully engineered brand partnership?

@LauraSlade

This immediately struck me as genius! In an industry where your core commodity is increasingly worth less - in this instance albums, singles and other traditional music sales - it makes perfect business sense to diversify into other products which your current customer - i.e. Iron Maiden fans - will be interested in buying. Iron Maiden has nothing to do with the alcoholic drinks business but it only took a little creative marketing thinking to diversify the brand into this new product area. Marketing 101! (and great PR too).

So this got me thinking, with nearly 40 years in the music business and a brand that is currently stronger than ever, what other business and marketing lessons can we learn from Iron Maiden?

1. Timing is everything

In 1990 Iron Maiden had their first and only UK number one single, the BBC-banned song 'Bring Your Daughter… to the Slaughter'. The band - aptly - released the single alongside Cliff Richard's 'Saviour's Day' for the 1990 Christmas No. 1, but due to not being officially released until the week after Christmas it knocked The Peter Pan of Pop off the number one slot in the following week and went straight to No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart on 5^th January 1991.

In a world before X Factor had Christmas number one sown up in November, everyone wanted to be Christmas number one , so all the big bands and artists would go head-to-head for the honour, nobody in their right mind released a single in the week after Christmas. Therefore statistically this was the easiest week in the year to secure number one with the lowest number of sales - so that's what Iron Maiden did.

Lesson: Anticipate when you can make the biggest impact and identify a period when you can galvanise your customer base to maximum effect.

2. Multi-task to cut costs

This top tip could also have been 'no job is beneath management' or 'continuous investment pays dividends'.

In the 1990s lead singer Bruce Dickinson trained to become a commercial airline pilot flying Boeing 757s for UK charter airline Astraeus. Since 2008 Dickinson has been the band's official pilot for overseas tours. In a band that prides itself on running cost-effective, lean tours, this is just one example of 'management' taking control and multi-tasking to cut costs.

How many UK MDs could cite such innovative examples of where they have managed to reduce costs on their bottom line?

3. Your best talent could be anywhere - even in the company's past

Of the current Iron Maiden line-up two-thirds have left the band only to subsequently re-join at a later date. The line-up is considered to be the strongest ever and key to the band's resurgence in recent years.

So consider this, when a good member of staff leaves and heads off to pastures new, do you leave on good terms and let them know the door is always open for a return; or cut them off, never to be given a further thought?

If it's the latter, then you might have lost a star employee not just once… but twice.

4. Don't be afraid to test new markets

Costa Rica, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and India are not traditional countries that rock bands tour in. But in the last 10 years Iron Maiden has been to all of them.

 The message here is that if you want to grow, then you have to keep finding a new audience, new customers and new markets for your service or product. And if you're a little bit niche, then you might just have to push the boundaries just a little bit further.

5. Relentlessly give your customers what they want

Finally, if you have a loyal customer, never take them for granted and continuously work at giving them a consistent product that aligns with the core values they originally fell in love with.

Since 1975 Iron Maiden has played over 2000 live shows and released 15 studio albums (plus a further 18 live and compilation albums) . That's approaching one release per year for 38 years. Not many software companies could attest to such work rate and consistency.

 Stephen

* Stats and references are taken from Wikipedia and from my own encyclopaedic and mostly useless knowledge of classic rock trivia.

With this in mind we've all probably had a moment when something which started out as a long-term bet in an analyst report, suddenly became common knowledge or parlance in everyday life. For example, 'cloud' used to be the preserve of just the IT and B2B tech mags and conversations between CIO - then suddenly Apple launched iCloud and now it's bandied around in mainstream advertising campaigns for just about every major IT vendor you possibly think.

Or what about social media - once just the domain of tech-savvy, switched-on individuals, suddenly your Mum wants to be your friend on Facebook, your Dad's LinkingIn with you and Twitter is awash with Z-list celebs being paid £££s for tweeting how much they love certain brands of shampoo...

These are the moments when tech goes mainstream.

I had a similar moment last week with 3D printing.

3D printing is one of those technologies that just seems too incredible to be true, a science fiction pipe dream that could never be reality. Yet little by little over the last 5-10 years we've seen incredible advancement in the technology, increased sophistication in what can be achieved and - perhaps most importantly - massive reduction in the cost the equipment. Then before you know it… Raj and Howard from the Big Bang Theory (yes I watch the Big Bang theory, let's just accept it and move on) are printing 3D miniature action figures.

Then, as if featuring on a prime time TV show wasn't enough to prove that 3D printing technology has gone mainstream, the news that 3D printing has been used to print a working gun certainly did the trick! BBC, Telegraph, Guardian and 250+ other news sites have covered the story in the last 48 hours. And that leads me to the ultimate golden rule of whether tech has gone mainstream… Coverage in the Daily Mail - Texas anarchist group fires world's first 3-D printed gun made entirely from plastic that can pass through airport metal detectors.

It's now just a matter of time until your Mum starts printing doilies and your Dad starts knocking up 3D garden gnomes in his shed.

@StephenDSSmith

My favourite example listed in the article is about how they managed to crack the issue of the government's persistent failure to persuade people to insulate their lofts. Apparently, for years the government was offering people financial help to insulate their lofts and failing. The nudge unit realised that it wasn't the money that held people back; it was clutter in their lofts. So a trial scheme was introduced where people were offered not subsidised insulation, but subsidised loft clearance on the condition that they got the space insulated afterwards. The scheme was more costly, but people loved it, and uptake rates tripled.

Another fantastic example of how simple changes in the way we communicate with people make huge differences was mentioned in the interview with Professor Robert Cialdini, founder of the organisation Influence and Work. When speaking to customers, receptionists in an American restaurant were instructed to change 'Thank you for calling, please call if you have to cancel or change your reservation' to 'Will you please call if you have to change or cancel'. This simple change meant that amount of no-shows dropped from 30% to 10%. Apparently, people prefer to follow the commitments that they have made especially if they made them publicly.

@isemanikova

Let me repeat that in case it wasn't clear. IBM has created a video by manipulating SINGLE ATOMS... as in… ATOMS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oSCX78-8-q0#!

Aside from being an incredible feat of engineering and science, it's also a phenomenally visual  PR stunt to demonstrate the company's ability.

@wonky_donky

I have to say I was a little sceptical when I laid my eyes on pages full of pictograms rather than short blocks of text but was still drawn to the images. I soon realised that I was actually really enjoying coming up with my own plot for important historic events.

The pictograms in the book are witty and provocative and I can definitely see bringing it to a few dinner parties. I mean, who wouldn't love a Pictionary session with a twist? I wonder if there is a room for it in my work too.

How would my boss react if I prepared the next slide deck for a new campaign idea in pictograms?

One thing that I did realise though is that it's worth giving things a go even when I'm sceptical about them at first. There are some really cool ways to engage with people - watch this space for my next company meeting slide!

@isemanikova

The image is made up of 120 pairs of trainers that were worn by runners in the Boston Marathon forming the shape of a heart, with the moving headline "We will finish the race".

Readers can then read the "stories behind the shoes" - the tales of 15 people who ran in the marathon and how they coped with the bombings - a lovely touch might I add. It really shows the power of imagery, especially in connection to something as tragic as this event.

What makes it more remarkable is the fact that they pulled this off in 3 days, very impressive and I wouldn't be surprised if this became an iconic poster of these times.

That old phrase "a picture paints a thousand words" is certainly applicable here.

@augustahenning

This week Virgin Media found itself at the wrong end of the social media viral scale. A broadband bill sent to a deceased customer has been shared more than 50,000 times on Facebook and the company has been slammed on Twitter.

Virgin Media has built its brand on being one of the fastest broadband providers in the country. Perhaps this faux pas shows that the customer service department isn't so up-to speed…

Now more so than ever, people have the power to take their negative customer experiences online and this highlights the need for a speedy response.

There's been a few high profile social media fails recently, which go some way to showing that these kinds of complaints are propelled into the public eye.

Historically, a grumpy phone call or email to complain about a service or product was a 1-2-1 communication. Now with a tweet or Facebook post, how companies deal with complaints is very much on the front line for all to see.

These sentiments are backed up by research carried out by our research team at Loudhouse for one of our clients, SAP. The company surveyed 1,000 UK online shoppers and found that on average, seven negative comments on social media leads consumers to think worse about a brand. Adding to this, is the fact more than half (52%) of people think brands should respond directly if someone leaves a negative comment on social media.

It seems that Virgin Media has apologised for the billing fumble, but as the Facebook share count rises, it looks like the social media community will still get some mileage out of this fiasco.

I had a quick look @richardbranson's Twitter page to see if he's mentioned 'billing-gate'…looks like he's been asking people to count flamingos instead.

JP