Brands cant achieve social media success by jumping on the  Kardashian bandwagon. Photograph: Billy Farrell Agency/Rex
    Here we are at the end of 2014 and it falls to me to review the    good, the bad and the just plain ugly social media efforts of the year gone by.    What fun.  
    Before we dive in its important to note how much the social    media landscape has changed over the past 12 months. Organic    (read: free) social media is a thing of the past. If you want    to achieve genuine reach in social, you need to stump up the    cash. And thats the short version.  
    With that in mind lets take a look back over the last year of    social media marketing and wallow in the wins, losses and    wastes of time that appeared in 2014.  
    The good news is that there was indeed a lot of good social    media marketing in 2014. 2014 was the year when integrated marketing became a    real thing.  
    Over in the US, 57% of ads during this years    Superbowl wore the hashtag love bite of their social media    marketing mistress loud and proud. Thats great for the US, but    what about here in the UK? The closest thing we have to the    Superbowl (in sheer size of viewership and ads) is probably the    X-Factor. Unfortunately, only    a handful of brands tend to take that kind of media buy    seriously so lets compare it to the next best thing:    Christmas.  
    From #ChristmasIsForSharing to    #SpecialBecause and the    excellent #WinChristmas you cant move    for social media signposts on this years batch of Christmas    ads which means finally, big brands are taking online    conversation seriously.  
    As great brands become the arbiters of great content (lets be    honest, as much as the Sainsburys ad is a cinematic    masterpiece  its hardly embodies the Live well for less    brand promise) its important that they create conversation    anchors to pull together online fans and advocates. The humble    hashtag is that conversation anchor and in 2015, therell be    more  oh so much more  of this all year round.  
    This section is brought to you under the banner of celebrities    biting off more than they can chew. Id like to draw your    attention to the potential pitfalls of scheduling your social    media posts way too far in advance (and not checking in on them    regularly). When Joan Rivers posted about her brand new iPhone 6 from six    foot under quite a few fans and friends were understandably    quite surprised. By all means enjoy a partnership with a    popular celebrity but if said famous persons clogs decide to    pop, you may want to consider cancelling that scheduled post.  
    Adding some light to this darkness we have Rita Ora who, after asking    for a mere 100,000 RTs in exchange for an early record launch    quickly dashed to claiming a hacking after only 2000 RTs    appeared.  
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Brands on social media in 2014: the good, the bad and the ugly