Cheltenham’s social media conference, the #AddMe conference, will play host to some of the country’s most prominent social media speakers.

The conference has been set up by me as part of my role as CIPR Student Representative for the University of Gloucestershire. Open to students and businesses alike the #AddMe Conference aims to tackle the key questions of how to create, manage and utilise relationships online. To highlight the significance of creating relationships online keeps the #AddMe Conference open to a wide range of topics.

The conference will highlight the significance of creating relationships online and will explain the continually adapting communication landscape for industries. The evening will begin with a talk from David Phillips who is an active PR practitioner, has been involved in the communications landscape for 20 years and is the author of three books about online public relations. He will be followed by Alex Sass, named “Best of British: Entrepreneur” by Attitude Magazine and currently heading up the digital team at Renegade Media. He will cover methods of digital PR, social media marketing and a warning to the industry.

The keynote speaker of the evening will be Aren Grimshaw. His roles include lead organiser of the Cornwall Twestival events, founder of Cornwall Social Media Cafe, marketing director of Tonick Media, publisher of Business Cornwall and consultant to a range of clients. He is a regular speaker on the subject of social media and its role within business.

The event will take place at the University of Gloucestershire, Park Campus on Wednesday 10^th March at 7.00pm until 10:30pm. Normal tickets cost £5 and student tickets cost £3 (using promo code STUDENTDISC). Refreshments will be available on the evening.

Further information and ticket sales can be found at: http://www.addme.mikewhite.co.uk/

You can also follow the event on Twitter: http://www.Twitter.com/Addmeconf

It is in my strictest, sternest and possibly controversial view that advertising online is dead.

Once upon a time it did flourish and at the same time the internet was known as a commercial trap for users. I remember in the early 1990s it was almost impossible to visit a website without a pop-up advert greeting you. Sometimes you would be unfortunate enough to stumble upon a hoard of multi-pop-up adverts which would force your browser to take you to all sorts of corners of the internet.

I can hardly say that advertising isn’t used on the internet. This would be untrue and in the past I have had deals with companies to host their advertising on my blog for a fee. It just so happens that such companies are growing in numbers on the internet. Ideally a website owner would want to avoid banner ads and these new online advertising companies are offering text links.

Why though? Why would a company ask for text links to be placed at the bottom of each page of another’s website? It would be very unlikely for a user to actually click on them, especially if the site in question featured a mass of content. There is only one possible answer and that would be search engine optimisation. If your company’s hyperlink can be found on the bottom of many website pages then searches would yield a crop of hyperlinks directed to the advertised site. There is something sly and accidental about such influence on individual’s searches though.

Advertising relies upon a passive audience. This is an audience that is subjected to a message which they are to take as granted. Hypodermic Needle theory explains this well as there is only a single line of communication. It is this single line of communication that does not exist on the internet anymore. Social media shows how internet users are engaging with each other on a two way communication model.

A few days ago I heard an Ex-Journalist talk about(…)