July 23, 2026 at 4:02 pm | Portfolio | No comment
Already active in social media, global management consultancy Hay Group wanted to answer the question “how are we doing?” Specifically, this long-standing client of our partner Plain Text needed to know how effective its activity was across platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, and how it compared with competitors.
To answer the question, Honey Digital teamed up with our partner Plain Text, and looked in depth at Hay Group’s ‘social profile’, examining the company’s reach, influence and effectiveness. The social media audit also looked at seven key competitors before drawing conclusions about Hay Group’s position and its ‘share’ of the conversation.
As well as giving Hay Group’s brand team a detailed picture of the company’s position in social media, we were able to make clear recommendations for action. For example we suggested tweaking the way the company uses social channels to more closely match where its core audience hangs out online, and using metrics that give a clearer picture of ROI. According to global head of brand communications Octavia Wolton, it’s been a very valuable exercise for Hay Group: “With the clarity that Honey Digital and Plain Text provided, we now know how to refine our social media activity and get the best value from it for Hay Group.”
July 17, 2026 at 11:06 am | Blog | No comment
A lot has happened here at Honey Digital Towers over the past few weeks. Not only have we expanded our existing social media services, but we’ve also developed some new ones.
We’re excited to announce the launch of ‘Plain Social - No-Nonsense Social Media Marketing’ and ‘Social Media Training’.
Plain Social is a new social media service, put together in partnership with Plain Text, and is a killer combination of social media savvy and communications skill. We both realised that our clients needed something more than a digital specialist or a copywriting agency could provide alone. As well as helping you find the best way to use social media, we can help you craft and manage your messages and conversations too.
As part of our Plain Social service, we now offer three levels of social media training - ‘Introduction to Social Media in business’, ‘Advances Social Media in business’, and ‘Custom social media training’.
Currently these one-day courses are available for delivery in-house to clients. We plan to put on scheduled courses in the near future.
Visit our new website page to learn more about these services, or contact us to discuss your social media requirements.
July 9, 2026 at 12:15 pm | Blog | No comment
So you’ve got your Twitter feed and some followers, your Facebook Likes are impressing the boss, and your Linked In group has some healthy activity. But is it proving itself in terms of investment, both in resource and campaign success?
ROI (return on investment) is seen as the holy grail by marketeers who, overwhelmed by the shear scope of analytics and measurables, have left it to the basics. But as SEM (search engine marketing) and social media itself evolve into an integral part of any marketing mix, are Likes and Followers enough?
In short, no. Likes and Followers are metrics left over from Naughties marketing and were never a solid metric to begin with. Most of these numbers would be made up of either spam followers or people looking to boost their own numbers and/or sell you something in the process. A final nail in the ‘Likes’ coffin was Facebook’s introduction of the brand timeline which removed the marketeers tool de jour - the Likegate.
Now marketeers need to think about engagement as one metric by which they should measure ROI and success. Put simply, engagement is communicating with your audience in a way that creates an emotional involvement and therefore holds influence and ultimately gains a result. Basically a long winded way of saying ‘someone who sees or clicks on your post’.
However, engagement numbers can be a double edged sword when read on their own. During a recent social media audit we conducted for a client, we saw extremely low engagement results for their Facebook page - around 2% dipping to 0%. Yet when you pitched this against their competitors, it was the same as three out of six of them.
Engagement is easily remedied by looking at what content is being created and creating more ‘engaging’ content. Posts with links aren’t as engaging as, say, a poll or a competition.
A simple change to a social media content strategy can increase engagement.
Get in touch with us if you’d like to discuss this further and look into how we can help with your businesses social media engagement.
July 5, 2026 at 5:23 pm | Blog | No comment
I’ve recently been growing weary of Facebook, so whilst I had some post operation rest time I decided to get back into Google+. And you know what, I used Google+ and I liked it.
Facebook is now so ingrained into everything we do online that you can’t not avoid it. But the more it expands and grows the more confusing it can seem. I now lean towards Twitter for my opinion posts and quick sharing of content as I find Facebook can sometimes miss the spot. Then again, maybe this says more about my friends and the brands I follow.
Enter Google+. Having set up and populated my Circles I found that the content I was ingesting was greater in both quality and quantity than that on Facebook or even Twitter. Certain brands and celebrities were posting alternative content to their other platform profiles, and to those who were re-purposing their content it seemed easier to access and consume on Google+. And despite following a good number of profiles, I never felt overwhelmed or bombarded - something in part down to Google’s simplistic, yet brilliant, design.
Yet, Google+ never seems as social as other platforms. Whereas Facebook is about linking yourselves together (a network), Google+ is more about digesting (and sharing) content.
Google+ has gone some way to changing social networking paradigms, and although in part it is a social ‘network’ I believe it is more than that. In fact, I’d go as far as to say the label of ‘social network’ is incorrect when talking about Google+. Essentially it’s all Google’s pre-Google+ products upgraded and in one place. There is no real networking to be done. Linked In is a social network; Facebook is a social network; Twitter is part social network and part news broadcaster. So if anything, Google+ should be likened more to Twitter than Facebook and if I were to describe Google+ it would be as a broadcast channel that has a social interaction element.
I’ve fallen in love with Google+ and now use it more than Facebook. I hope more users start to adopt it which, as Google improve and expand it, they will.
Do you use Google+? Do you like it/hate it? And do you agree it’s not a ‘social network’? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Author Daniel Honey on Google+
Honey Digital on Google+
