PAUL SUTTON
Digital Media, PR & Comms strategy bloke at BOTTLE PR in Oxford. Hippie creative type & social media Jedi (yes, Jedi). Husband, daddy, cat man & bunny owner. Music lover, Spurs fan & cook. Not necessarily in that order...
Posts
March 03, 02:01 AM
After two and half years and 182 posts at The Social Web, I've decided to move to pastures new to continue my blogging adventure. You can now find me at www.futurecomms.co.uk.
Topic-wise, I'll still be concentrating on social media, PR 2.0 and digital marketing. But I'm moving to the Tumblr platform to enable me to post snappier insights in different formats as well as feature posts. And as the name suggests, FutureComms will be focused on trends and thoughts on what's coming next, with news and views from thought leaders outside the social media echo chamber.
See you there?
Topic-wise, I'll still be concentrating on social media, PR 2.0 and digital marketing. But I'm moving to the Tumblr platform to enable me to post snappier insights in different formats as well as feature posts. And as the name suggests, FutureComms will be focused on trends and thoughts on what's coming next, with news and views from thought leaders outside the social media echo chamber.
See you there?
December 15, 05:47 AM
We started 2011 walking an economic tightrope and we’re ending it balancing precariously on the precipice of a double-dip recession. On the face of it, it would seem that not a lot has changed over the last twelve months. And yet this year has seen some fundamental changes to the way business operates and communicates with clients, customers, suppliers and peers. The influence of social media has grown further and the world of public relations has finally started to wake up to the fact. But perhaps the biggest change that I’ve observed over the last year has been the incredible increase in the speed of communications, and the resultant stresses this is placing on those working in the industry. Real-time has gone, well, real-time.
Working in a PR or marketing agency has always been fairly pressured. Managing (and balancing) the demands of multiple clients can be tough, but the dynamism this necessitates makes the communications industry an exciting place to work. Responding to the pace of change of the industry, however, and perhaps driven by the expectations of consumers facilitated by the social web, client demands are becoming ever greater. Respond to an email in more than an hour? I don’t think so. Not be on call 24/7? Forget it.
Back in January I made some predictions about what the year ahead might hold, most of which I’m pleased to say, have manifested (social television’s not here yet, but it’s coming!). One of these was about the increasing speed of the way we communicate and the resultant requirement for brevity. Arguably greater than content marketing, the decline of the website, platform consolidation or even mobile computing, it’s this that has had the greatest impact for me personally and for many others in 2011.
Client demands are increasing
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
Working in a PR or marketing agency has always been fairly pressured. Managing (and balancing) the demands of multiple clients can be tough, but the dynamism this necessitates makes the communications industry an exciting place to work. Responding to the pace of change of the industry, however, and perhaps driven by the expectations of consumers facilitated by the social web, client demands are becoming ever greater. Respond to an email in more than an hour? I don’t think so. Not be on call 24/7? Forget it.
Back in January I made some predictions about what the year ahead might hold, most of which I’m pleased to say, have manifested (social television’s not here yet, but it’s coming!). One of these was about the increasing speed of the way we communicate and the resultant requirement for brevity. Arguably greater than content marketing, the decline of the website, platform consolidation or even mobile computing, it’s this that has had the greatest impact for me personally and for many others in 2011.
Client demands are increasing
The expectations of clients that proposals and strategies can be turned round in (in some cases) hours and that everything is needed in double quick time mean that I’m bloody busy. All the time. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I’m busier than I think I’ve ever been in my working life.
And it’s not just me; the PRSA in the USA and the CIPR in the UK have recently joined forces to try and redefine what being a PR practitioner really means in today’s always-on, real-time, digitally-driven world. It’s (to me at least) a redundant exercise that will do little but enable those within the organisations to congratulate each other about their amazing insight while us common folk get on with doing the job. I don't care how PR defines itself, and neither should you. But the main point to take from this is that there’s no going back. When PR dinosaurs start to realise that they need to react to social media and the pace of the industry (even if solely to protect themselves), you know it’s here to stay. The communications industry is evolving right before our eyes. And it’s doing so very, very quickly. Keep up or become extinct.
As I say, I’m now busier than I’ve ever been and seem to spend far too much time fire-fighting and nowhere near enough time strategising, planning and thinking. Five minutes in the shower every morning really shouldn’t be all the time I have for creativity and brain space. And this has impacted on other areas of my professional life; I’m not using Google+ nearly as much as I’d like, and this blog has, I feel, suffered over the last six months.
The evolution of blogging
The blogosphere in general has changed noticeably this year. Some bloggers who I read avidly in January now hardly ever post. Others have started regurgitating the same old content and have become entirely predictable and, yes, dull. The echo chamber within social media and communications has grown ever larger during 2011 and the lack of original and insightful voices of people who are prepared to speak out, challenge and say something different is a little depressing if I’m honest.
A few months ago, the hugely respected and admired Danny Brown published a post titled 'The Mind-Numbing Banality of Sameness' that summarised his own thoughts on what was happening. I have to respect the way that he seemed to recognise a little of this in himself and repositioned his massively successful blog to ensure he wasn’t dragged into the mire. As a result I tapped into a whole new slew of bloggers, mostly from the USA, who thought along the same lines. But after a few months of reading, even these guys have formed something of their own micro echo chamber, just with a different viewpoint. But maybe that’s the way of the blogosphere?
Seeing things from a new perspective
For me personally, the year has been successful in many ways: my agency, BOTTLE, won our first ever social media award in July, followed by another in November. It was also short-listed for others, including Best Digital PR Agency. And then a few weeks ago, the wider agency won Outstanding Consultancy of the Year at the CIPR PRide Awards.
But I can’t help feel that I’ve gone backwards as a blogger over the last few months. This is my 61st post on The Social Web this year; in 2010 I posted 98 times. That's down by over a third. And if I’m being 100% honest, some of those 61 posts have been based on half-baked thoughts and ideas, rushed out without giving the concepts or writing itself time to develop. Not good.
When I look back over a year’s blogging, I started well with original thoughts around developing a model for social communications ROI and openly calling out PR agency heads for being idiots due to their lack of nous about the evolution of the industry. During the summer I carried out a two month experiment where I didn’t use a search engine, and I blogged about the findings from this. I was prepared to challenge, to question and to be original. And then somewhere around August/September, I lost my way and fell into the chasm of the echo chamber. My writing has become predictable, overly critical and, in some cases, pointless.
This is, I feel, in part due to the aforementioned levels of work and pressure I find myself having to deal with. But it’s not an excuse. And when I look at this lack of available time, the need for brevity and the (related?) rise of Tumblr, it gives me a lot of food for thought.
And it’s not just me; the PRSA in the USA and the CIPR in the UK have recently joined forces to try and redefine what being a PR practitioner really means in today’s always-on, real-time, digitally-driven world. It’s (to me at least) a redundant exercise that will do little but enable those within the organisations to congratulate each other about their amazing insight while us common folk get on with doing the job. I don't care how PR defines itself, and neither should you. But the main point to take from this is that there’s no going back. When PR dinosaurs start to realise that they need to react to social media and the pace of the industry (even if solely to protect themselves), you know it’s here to stay. The communications industry is evolving right before our eyes. And it’s doing so very, very quickly. Keep up or become extinct.
As I say, I’m now busier than I’ve ever been and seem to spend far too much time fire-fighting and nowhere near enough time strategising, planning and thinking. Five minutes in the shower every morning really shouldn’t be all the time I have for creativity and brain space. And this has impacted on other areas of my professional life; I’m not using Google+ nearly as much as I’d like, and this blog has, I feel, suffered over the last six months.
The evolution of blogging
The blogosphere in general has changed noticeably this year. Some bloggers who I read avidly in January now hardly ever post. Others have started regurgitating the same old content and have become entirely predictable and, yes, dull. The echo chamber within social media and communications has grown ever larger during 2011 and the lack of original and insightful voices of people who are prepared to speak out, challenge and say something different is a little depressing if I’m honest.
A few months ago, the hugely respected and admired Danny Brown published a post titled 'The Mind-Numbing Banality of Sameness' that summarised his own thoughts on what was happening. I have to respect the way that he seemed to recognise a little of this in himself and repositioned his massively successful blog to ensure he wasn’t dragged into the mire. As a result I tapped into a whole new slew of bloggers, mostly from the USA, who thought along the same lines. But after a few months of reading, even these guys have formed something of their own micro echo chamber, just with a different viewpoint. But maybe that’s the way of the blogosphere?
Seeing things from a new perspective
For me personally, the year has been successful in many ways: my agency, BOTTLE, won our first ever social media award in July, followed by another in November. It was also short-listed for others, including Best Digital PR Agency. And then a few weeks ago, the wider agency won Outstanding Consultancy of the Year at the CIPR PRide Awards.
But I can’t help feel that I’ve gone backwards as a blogger over the last few months. This is my 61st post on The Social Web this year; in 2010 I posted 98 times. That's down by over a third. And if I’m being 100% honest, some of those 61 posts have been based on half-baked thoughts and ideas, rushed out without giving the concepts or writing itself time to develop. Not good.
When I look back over a year’s blogging, I started well with original thoughts around developing a model for social communications ROI and openly calling out PR agency heads for being idiots due to their lack of nous about the evolution of the industry. During the summer I carried out a two month experiment where I didn’t use a search engine, and I blogged about the findings from this. I was prepared to challenge, to question and to be original. And then somewhere around August/September, I lost my way and fell into the chasm of the echo chamber. My writing has become predictable, overly critical and, in some cases, pointless.
This is, I feel, in part due to the aforementioned levels of work and pressure I find myself having to deal with. But it’s not an excuse. And when I look at this lack of available time, the need for brevity and the (related?) rise of Tumblr, it gives me a lot of food for thought.
And so over the Christmas holiday period and into January I’m going to be giving serious consideration to how, and indeed if, this blog continues. I need to get back to offering original thought and personal opinion on hot digital, social and technological topics – and on how we as people think about them. Blogging is by people for people – it shouldn’t be about the latest Facebook development or how to use Google+. But at the same time, I want to provide easy access to some key trend data that you, dear reader, may find useful. Chances are, when I come back, it’ll be with something new and different, and I very much hope that you’ll still be interested enough to stay with me in the next stage of my blogging journey.
In the meantime, thanks for sticking with me in 2011. Merry Christmas to every single person who has read this blog, commented or shared a post with their networks over the last 12 months. Have a wonderful holiday with your family: eat, drink and be merry. Sending the best of season’s greetings to you and yours, from me and mine.
In the meantime, thanks for sticking with me in 2011. Merry Christmas to every single person who has read this blog, commented or shared a post with their networks over the last 12 months. Have a wonderful holiday with your family: eat, drink and be merry. Sending the best of season’s greetings to you and yours, from me and mine.
Paul x
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
December 01, 08:38 AM
Much as I love my daily fix of thoughts, opinions and news from across the blogosphere, there are times when you can’t beat spending time sitting down and reading a book to get the brain cells working. But what are the most informative and challenging books covering digital media, PR 2.0, social technology, brand strategy and the evolution of the web currently available?
At the risk of sounding like a complete geek, I’m asking Santa Claus to bring me a few social communications strategy books when he completes his annual round-the-world-in-24-hours trip next month. There are loads of books out there from people I respect, but I thought it’d be a nice idea to get YOUR input to identify the best of the best for the benefit of everyone.
This is my current shortlist, and I’d love to get your opinions on these books if you’ve read them as well as additional options:
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
At the risk of sounding like a complete geek, I’m asking Santa Claus to bring me a few social communications strategy books when he completes his annual round-the-world-in-24-hours trip next month. There are loads of books out there from people I respect, but I thought it’d be a nice idea to get YOUR input to identify the best of the best for the benefit of everyone.
This is my current shortlist, and I’d love to get your opinions on these books if you’ve read them as well as additional options:
- Welcome to the Fifth Estate, by Geoff Livingston & Adam Ostrow
- Socialnomics, by Erik Qualman
- The End of Business as Usual, by Brian Solis
- Putting the Public back in Public Relations, by Deidre Breakenridge & Brian Solis
- The Now Revolution, by Jay Baer & Amber Naslund
- The New Community Rules, by Tamar Weinburg
- The Thank You Economy, by Gary Vaynerchuk
- Social Media ROI, by Olivier Blanchard
- Trust Agents, by Chris Brogan & Julien Smith
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
November 27, 05:26 PM
Lots has been written about how PR is evolving over the last couple of years. As an industry, we’ve been incredibly slow to react to changes in the media landscape, and for every progressive consultant who’s spending time getting to grips with changing consumer behaviour, there’s another who’s five or ten years out of date. But such has been the pace of change during the last twelve months that I feel that PR as a discipline has reached tipping point. Conventional public relations is now heading for extinction.
Things started to evolve a few years ago when MySpace, Bebo and Facebook went mainstream. Blogging had already been causing shifts in focus since the early 2000s, but it was the advent of the social networks that changed the game for good. Suddenly print media consumption started to decrease as our clients’ ‘publics’ spent more and more time on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. And then came Twitter, and PR would never be the same again.
Broadcast media no longer breaks the news; Twitter breaks the news. And by the time the newspapers report it a day later, stories have moved on via microblogging. PR was always a fast moving industry, but the speed at which it now has to operate is incredible. In the face of this pace, the declining influence of print media and new consumer behaviours, traditional public relations is starting to look completely redundant. And with it, the agencies, MDs and consultants who’ve been paying lip service to social media and digital comms are starting to realise that they're rapidly losing touch.
The Engagement Faction
In the last few months, there’s been a distinct and noticeable shift in the way that the more progressive PR agencies are approaching their business. Some have launched specialist social or digital media divisions, others have dropped the PR moniker from their name completely, and others have repositioned as reputation, engagement or even ‘recommendation’ agencies. There seems to be a conscious decision by successful agencies to distance themselves from the term ‘public relations’. And given the general perception of the rest of the backward industry, I can’t say I’m either surprised or in disagreement.
Recently, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) announced that it wants to redefine ‘modern PR’. But I’m in total agreement with Danny Whatmough, who wrote on the Econsultancy blog in follow up that “there is immense fear in the PR industry about what it actually means to do PR these days. And I am constantly frustrated by how slow sections of the industry are to reinvent themselves. Apart from a few good agencies and practitioners doing great, pioneering work, there is too much burying of heads in the sand and hoping that the 'same old' will continue to be enough.” Spot on.
Personally, I’d love to see the back of those agencies and consultants who are now starting to panic about brand engagement. And it might not be long coming. Over the next year I can see PR becoming still further integrated with the marketing, SEO and customer service functions; more responsible for managing customer relationships and a wider communications role; significantly more integrated with mobile, web and digital marketing; and starting to finally answer the perpetual question of ROI.
Change is coming, and it’s coming fast. And if that means the death in 2012 of public relations as we know it in order for those doing good work to prosper, then so be it. Only the strong shall survive.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
Things started to evolve a few years ago when MySpace, Bebo and Facebook went mainstream. Blogging had already been causing shifts in focus since the early 2000s, but it was the advent of the social networks that changed the game for good. Suddenly print media consumption started to decrease as our clients’ ‘publics’ spent more and more time on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. And then came Twitter, and PR would never be the same again.
Broadcast media no longer breaks the news; Twitter breaks the news. And by the time the newspapers report it a day later, stories have moved on via microblogging. PR was always a fast moving industry, but the speed at which it now has to operate is incredible. In the face of this pace, the declining influence of print media and new consumer behaviours, traditional public relations is starting to look completely redundant. And with it, the agencies, MDs and consultants who’ve been paying lip service to social media and digital comms are starting to realise that they're rapidly losing touch.
The Engagement Faction
In the last few months, there’s been a distinct and noticeable shift in the way that the more progressive PR agencies are approaching their business. Some have launched specialist social or digital media divisions, others have dropped the PR moniker from their name completely, and others have repositioned as reputation, engagement or even ‘recommendation’ agencies. There seems to be a conscious decision by successful agencies to distance themselves from the term ‘public relations’. And given the general perception of the rest of the backward industry, I can’t say I’m either surprised or in disagreement.
Recently, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) announced that it wants to redefine ‘modern PR’. But I’m in total agreement with Danny Whatmough, who wrote on the Econsultancy blog in follow up that “there is immense fear in the PR industry about what it actually means to do PR these days. And I am constantly frustrated by how slow sections of the industry are to reinvent themselves. Apart from a few good agencies and practitioners doing great, pioneering work, there is too much burying of heads in the sand and hoping that the 'same old' will continue to be enough.” Spot on.
Personally, I’d love to see the back of those agencies and consultants who are now starting to panic about brand engagement. And it might not be long coming. Over the next year I can see PR becoming still further integrated with the marketing, SEO and customer service functions; more responsible for managing customer relationships and a wider communications role; significantly more integrated with mobile, web and digital marketing; and starting to finally answer the perpetual question of ROI.
Change is coming, and it’s coming fast. And if that means the death in 2012 of public relations as we know it in order for those doing good work to prosper, then so be it. Only the strong shall survive.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
November 21, 10:32 AM
Online privacy is a massive issue. If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to rile up a whole bunch of people, it’s to what degree their personal data is being scraped, acquired, harvested, analysed, utilised and sold. Facebook and Google have both come under huge fire in the last twelve months over their use of data, and continue to do so. So you’d think other services would watch and learn, wouldn’t you? Well not in the case of Klout, the much-maligned online influence management tool.
I’ve taken the weekly pannings of Klout by social media bloggers with a pinch of salt, and the complete over-reactions of some people to the recent adjustment to the scoring system were laughable. It’s pretty much acknowledged among my own network of peers that Klout is a largely useless measure, with an impenetrable ranking system that seems to bear little relation to what one does on Twitter or Facebook or Google+. But people are ambivalent towards it; they simply don’t feel strongly enough to opt out. And I’ve been the same...until now.
Gaming, Privacy & Lies
In the last few days I’ve read some pretty shocking posts about Klout, online privacy and the company’s motives. The first to catch my eye was a post on Social Media Today by Hollis Tibbetts, who ran an experiment which proved how easy it is to game the system and gain a score. Amusing and pretty mild stuff, but it sowed the seed that led to me read a couple more serious posts that blew things wide open.
When Klout gave its algorithms a makeover and in doing so pissed off many a would-be social media guru, it also made some changes that left the service exposed to significant criticism. By scraping the Facebook friends of Klout users, assigning those friends a Klout score based on public information, and then encouraging the original user to invite their friends to register, Klout did little more than cause serious concerns over privacy. There were stories of mothers being prompted to invite their teenage (and probably under 13 year old) children to join Klout after this trolling activity, and the service faced a backlash. Klout says it has since reversed Facebook scraping...but this appears to be bullshit. Although she no longer has a score, I’m still prompted to invite my wife to Klout, as the screen grab below shows.
Keith Dawson from thecmosite.com discussed these issues in a post last week, in which he asserts that Klout’s problems are “rooted in a serious overreach in the company's attempt to be viral.” This is spot on, and it’s clear that the company has not considered the privacy implications of what it has done, especially shocking when the whole service is based around data scraping.
Is Klout Against the Law?
But the worst was yet to come. Via Dawson’s article, I discovered a superb post by blogger and author Charles Stross. I encourage you to read this one in full for yourself, but to precise it, Stross claims that Klout breaks eight Principles of the 1998 UK Data Protection Act (it operates under American privacy law). In fact, he states in no uncertain terms that Klout is “flagrantly in violation of UK data protection law” and that its business model is “flat-out illegal in the UK and, I believe, throughout the EU”. He outlines in compelling detail the reasons for this, including issues over consent, transparency and verification. In short, if Klout were a UK company, it would but shut down immediately.
Another area Stross discusses is Klout’s raison d’etre. Is it providing a service out of the goodness of its heart? Of course not, it’s in it for money and has investors to satisfy. And yet we don’t think about that. We don’t think about the fact that although it’s presenting itself as “the standard for influence” and providing useful (*cough*) data for us, it’s really gathering as much personal information from us as it can and flogging it to the highest bidder.
Opt Out Now. Or Not...
It really is shocking stuff. So of course, having read all this, I’ve opted out, haven’t I? Well...no. And the reason is that I have an extremely morbid curiosity about Klout, how it works and about why people use it. My network doesn’t value it, and yet they don’t opt out. Why? I asked the question on Twitter. Stuart Witts said: “presumably the fear that it will suddenly become the default measurement of influence”. Joel Hughes said: “sounds like hassle - got a millions other things I need to do”. And so it perpetuates.
So what is it that holds us to a service that could well be illegal, serves little or no value, and has no respect? Is it a case of lemmings, where until one or a few jump off the cliff, the rest will sit tight? Are we seriously that needy? Or is it simply that we don’t care? And if not, does the information in this blog post change your mind in any way, shape or form? What do you think?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
I’ve taken the weekly pannings of Klout by social media bloggers with a pinch of salt, and the complete over-reactions of some people to the recent adjustment to the scoring system were laughable. It’s pretty much acknowledged among my own network of peers that Klout is a largely useless measure, with an impenetrable ranking system that seems to bear little relation to what one does on Twitter or Facebook or Google+. But people are ambivalent towards it; they simply don’t feel strongly enough to opt out. And I’ve been the same...until now.
Gaming, Privacy & Lies
In the last few days I’ve read some pretty shocking posts about Klout, online privacy and the company’s motives. The first to catch my eye was a post on Social Media Today by Hollis Tibbetts, who ran an experiment which proved how easy it is to game the system and gain a score. Amusing and pretty mild stuff, but it sowed the seed that led to me read a couple more serious posts that blew things wide open.
When Klout gave its algorithms a makeover and in doing so pissed off many a would-be social media guru, it also made some changes that left the service exposed to significant criticism. By scraping the Facebook friends of Klout users, assigning those friends a Klout score based on public information, and then encouraging the original user to invite their friends to register, Klout did little more than cause serious concerns over privacy. There were stories of mothers being prompted to invite their teenage (and probably under 13 year old) children to join Klout after this trolling activity, and the service faced a backlash. Klout says it has since reversed Facebook scraping...but this appears to be bullshit. Although she no longer has a score, I’m still prompted to invite my wife to Klout, as the screen grab below shows.
Keith Dawson from thecmosite.com discussed these issues in a post last week, in which he asserts that Klout’s problems are “rooted in a serious overreach in the company's attempt to be viral.” This is spot on, and it’s clear that the company has not considered the privacy implications of what it has done, especially shocking when the whole service is based around data scraping.
Is Klout Against the Law?
But the worst was yet to come. Via Dawson’s article, I discovered a superb post by blogger and author Charles Stross. I encourage you to read this one in full for yourself, but to precise it, Stross claims that Klout breaks eight Principles of the 1998 UK Data Protection Act (it operates under American privacy law). In fact, he states in no uncertain terms that Klout is “flagrantly in violation of UK data protection law” and that its business model is “flat-out illegal in the UK and, I believe, throughout the EU”. He outlines in compelling detail the reasons for this, including issues over consent, transparency and verification. In short, if Klout were a UK company, it would but shut down immediately.
Another area Stross discusses is Klout’s raison d’etre. Is it providing a service out of the goodness of its heart? Of course not, it’s in it for money and has investors to satisfy. And yet we don’t think about that. We don’t think about the fact that although it’s presenting itself as “the standard for influence” and providing useful (*cough*) data for us, it’s really gathering as much personal information from us as it can and flogging it to the highest bidder.
Opt Out Now. Or Not...
It really is shocking stuff. So of course, having read all this, I’ve opted out, haven’t I? Well...no. And the reason is that I have an extremely morbid curiosity about Klout, how it works and about why people use it. My network doesn’t value it, and yet they don’t opt out. Why? I asked the question on Twitter. Stuart Witts said: “presumably the fear that it will suddenly become the default measurement of influence”. Joel Hughes said: “sounds like hassle - got a millions other things I need to do”. And so it perpetuates.
So what is it that holds us to a service that could well be illegal, serves little or no value, and has no respect? Is it a case of lemmings, where until one or a few jump off the cliff, the rest will sit tight? Are we seriously that needy? Or is it simply that we don’t care? And if not, does the information in this blog post change your mind in any way, shape or form? What do you think?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
November 10, 09:23 AM
This morning I should have taken my place among the good and the great of the UK social media scene for a presentation by Adobe on its new analytics tool. Instead, I’ve been sat at my PC in the office hammering out a credentials document for a pitch, guiding a colleague on a media relations programme for a client, and devising an integrated social/PR outreach programme for another. The reason? I don’t live or work in London. And it sucks.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had to either cancel attendance at a seminar or turn down an invite to a product launch or miss out on a community social because I’m not city-based. In fact, I’ve been given the nickname ‘No Show’. (I haven’t, but I should have.) And it’s extremely frustrating as the fact is that most of the time I simply can’t justify the four hour round trip from Oxfordshire to central London and back again when I have a to-do list that would strike fear into the most devoted of PR consultants.
Keeping up with what happens in the digital world isn’t easy. And the benefits of having like-minded peers with whom you can chew the fat and throw around ideas over an impromptu beer are massive. But in the UK, when you work outside London, or to a lesser extent Manchester, the former is even more challenging and the latter is virtually impossible. I can only assume it’s the same in the US with the likes of Chicago, New York and San Francisco, and in other countries too. And it feels extremely isolating. It feels like I am constantly on the periphery of the industry and the community, no matter how much time I spend on Twitter or Facebook engaging with peers and friends (who I rarely see). It feels like I have to work doubly hard just to keep up, let alone to try and get ahead (whether or not that is true, I have no idea).
Take yesterday for example. I needed to be in London for an 8.30am breakfast meeting with a digital committee I’m involved with. That meant getting up at 5.30am and, more importantly, it meant I didn’t get to my desk and start working in earnest until midday. Even for a meeting at the crack of dawn I missed three hours of desk time. And hence, there was just no way, when I sat down and assessed things at 9pm last night, that I could take another five or six hours out today.
So what’s the point? Is this post just a bitching session? Well partly, yes. I find myself immensely frustrated that I feel like my learning, my thoughts and my ideas are constrained by my own geographical isolation. But it’s more to find out from you what you think of this.
If you’re outside the city, whatever city and country that may be, do you feel the same? If you’re inside the city, do you have any sympathy or have any suggestions for me (other than moving)? And from a broader perspective, what does this say about social media in general – does it prove what many of us say about the need to take online relationships offline, or is it evidence of someone who is more remote who’s able to build those relationships where he couldn’t have done so a few years back? Over to you...
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
October 21, 04:06 AM
There are currently two significant social media/tech events happening in the UK: Like Minds and LiveTech. Several of the people I’m friends with or follow closely are in attendance at one or other, some speaking and some listening. But they’re all tweeting from them using the #LikeMinds and #LiveTech hashtags. Boy are they tweeting from them! It’s making my Twitter stream as impenetrable as a Leopard 2A6 Battle Tank (Google it).
I know I’m being a miserable sod, but does anyone actually follow these events on Twitter? It’s not like a Twitter chat where you need a hashtag in order to help follow a conversation that lasts maybe an hour. It’s just a constant flow of largely irrelevant and unfiltered junk that has no context and is of no benefit to man nor beast. Especially when there may be several people tweeting the same thing from the same event at the same time. As Julie Howell succinctly put it to me on Twitter: “It fills up your timeline with odious crap”.
Now I can see the benefit (I guess) if you’re not attending but want to. But even then, does anyone sit at their computer watching the hashtag for a day or three? Of course they don’t – chances are, if they wanted to attend but couldn’t it’s because they were too busy and are not going to have the time to wade through mountains of hashtagged rubbish to pick out the nuggets at a later date. Which renders it largely pointless. The odd, really insightful and interesting tweet I think most people welcome, me included. But how many of these type of tweets are truly insightful and interesting? Olly Gosling said to me on Twitter: “When it's interesting and relevant, I quite like it. But if it's ‘social is about people #sm101’ kind of crap, then that grates...”
The fact is that, as a rule, the only people genuinely interested in what you have to tweet from a live event are the people in the room. Who are with you, listening to the same stuff. And so should be taking in what people are saying rather than watching it on their iPhone or furiously typing every sentence onto their iPad.
More to the point, if you pay to attend an event, I’d assume you’re interested in what the speakers have to say. So how about paying those speaking the courtesy of your attention and giving them some eye contact? There’s nothing worse when speaking at an event to look out at a room full of people playing with their mobiles. I know, I’ve done it. They may well have been hanging on my every word and tweeting everything I said, but I felt completely disengaged from them.
Tweetdeck has just introduced the ability to filter out hashtags, and I really hope Hootsuite follows suit very soon. It’s likely to be a very well-used function, in my opinion. So how about we all think twice when we next sit down at a conference? Maybe put the tech down while people are speaking? And if you do feel the need to live event tweet, please, please know your audience and be picky. By all means discuss interesting points using Twitter, but please, there’s absolutely no need to tweet every single word that is said.
What are your feelings about live event tweeting?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
I know I’m being a miserable sod, but does anyone actually follow these events on Twitter? It’s not like a Twitter chat where you need a hashtag in order to help follow a conversation that lasts maybe an hour. It’s just a constant flow of largely irrelevant and unfiltered junk that has no context and is of no benefit to man nor beast. Especially when there may be several people tweeting the same thing from the same event at the same time. As Julie Howell succinctly put it to me on Twitter: “It fills up your timeline with odious crap”.
Now I can see the benefit (I guess) if you’re not attending but want to. But even then, does anyone sit at their computer watching the hashtag for a day or three? Of course they don’t – chances are, if they wanted to attend but couldn’t it’s because they were too busy and are not going to have the time to wade through mountains of hashtagged rubbish to pick out the nuggets at a later date. Which renders it largely pointless. The odd, really insightful and interesting tweet I think most people welcome, me included. But how many of these type of tweets are truly insightful and interesting? Olly Gosling said to me on Twitter: “When it's interesting and relevant, I quite like it. But if it's ‘social is about people #sm101’ kind of crap, then that grates...”
The fact is that, as a rule, the only people genuinely interested in what you have to tweet from a live event are the people in the room. Who are with you, listening to the same stuff. And so should be taking in what people are saying rather than watching it on their iPhone or furiously typing every sentence onto their iPad.
More to the point, if you pay to attend an event, I’d assume you’re interested in what the speakers have to say. So how about paying those speaking the courtesy of your attention and giving them some eye contact? There’s nothing worse when speaking at an event to look out at a room full of people playing with their mobiles. I know, I’ve done it. They may well have been hanging on my every word and tweeting everything I said, but I felt completely disengaged from them.
Tweetdeck has just introduced the ability to filter out hashtags, and I really hope Hootsuite follows suit very soon. It’s likely to be a very well-used function, in my opinion. So how about we all think twice when we next sit down at a conference? Maybe put the tech down while people are speaking? And if you do feel the need to live event tweet, please, please know your audience and be picky. By all means discuss interesting points using Twitter, but please, there’s absolutely no need to tweet every single word that is said.
What are your feelings about live event tweeting?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
October 20, 08:18 AM
Let’s say you have a client who’s not taken your advice. At least, not properly. They’ve commenced PR or marketing activity that is, at best, a half-hearted attempt at what you originally recommended and the reality is a shadow of the grand idea that you proposed. Unsurprising to you, it doesn’t deliver. Then it comes to review time. What do you do: do you skirt around the issue and encourage the client that it’s something to build on? Do you throw yourself under the bus and accept blame? Or do you lay it on the line and tell them exactly why it crashed and burned, recapping your original recommendations?
I’m sure every single consultant reading this has been in this situation, and I’m equally sure that every single consultant reading this is thinking “I tell them the truth”. But I’m also convinced that isn’t the case. Ideas get scaled back all the time due to budgets or resourcing or sometimes a disbelief that ALL of the proposed activity is necessary. More often than not, these water down the impact of a campaign, but not pointing this out to clients largely keeps them on-side and happy. A lot of people in PR hate review meetings: the truth is they’d rather not have them at all. But what we hate even more than review meetings is unhappy clients. ‘Keep ‘em happy’ is the name of the game. And if you tell clients the truth about some of the nonsensical decisions they make, you risk turning a happy (if ignorant) client into an unhappy client. After all the customer is always right, isn't he?
The nature of spin
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
I’m sure every single consultant reading this has been in this situation, and I’m equally sure that every single consultant reading this is thinking “I tell them the truth”. But I’m also convinced that isn’t the case. Ideas get scaled back all the time due to budgets or resourcing or sometimes a disbelief that ALL of the proposed activity is necessary. More often than not, these water down the impact of a campaign, but not pointing this out to clients largely keeps them on-side and happy. A lot of people in PR hate review meetings: the truth is they’d rather not have them at all. But what we hate even more than review meetings is unhappy clients. ‘Keep ‘em happy’ is the name of the game. And if you tell clients the truth about some of the nonsensical decisions they make, you risk turning a happy (if ignorant) client into an unhappy client. After all the customer is always right, isn't he?
The nature of spin
In PR, we’re very good at what’s become termed as ‘spin’. The word spin has extremely negative connotations: it implies dishonesty and duplicity, and makes you think of Max Clifford and The News of the World newspaper. And PR really is not about spin in that sense. But what it is about is managing reputation, and that implies – no, necessitates – being able to put a positive sheen on events, people, products, services and companies. PR consultants need to be able to ‘polish a turd’. And so when it comes to reviewing activities, it’s second nature to get out the Mr Sheen.
Personally, however, I like to believe (maybe naively) that people aren’t stupid, that they know when something’s not lived up to expectations, and that they’d rather their PR consultants told them the truth to help them to understand and to stop them making the same mistake again. Yes, it might hack them off and yes, you may lose the odd one or two clients as a result. But as a rule, surely the majority would have more respect for a PR consultant who said (politely) if we’d have done X, Y and Z as we initially recommended, we may have seen a better result. Right?
Or maybe not. Sean Fleming, an experienced consultant, says he thinks there’s a bit of a Catch 22 in play: “Most clients will tell you they want you to be honest with them. But they don't mean it. Those clients who do mean it are - probably - the ones you need to do less sugar-coating for. Why? Because they are the more engaged and involved, in my experience. Consequently not only do they already know if something is working or not but they probably have a good idea why. They know what is expected of them in order to make things work and they'll know when they've let the side down. The ones that you have to have the frank conversations with - and again this is my personal perspective - are those that don't get fully involved, treat you like a supplier rather than a consultant, and all too often simply don't get it.”
Is sugar-coating necessary?
Personally, however, I like to believe (maybe naively) that people aren’t stupid, that they know when something’s not lived up to expectations, and that they’d rather their PR consultants told them the truth to help them to understand and to stop them making the same mistake again. Yes, it might hack them off and yes, you may lose the odd one or two clients as a result. But as a rule, surely the majority would have more respect for a PR consultant who said (politely) if we’d have done X, Y and Z as we initially recommended, we may have seen a better result. Right?
Or maybe not. Sean Fleming, an experienced consultant, says he thinks there’s a bit of a Catch 22 in play: “Most clients will tell you they want you to be honest with them. But they don't mean it. Those clients who do mean it are - probably - the ones you need to do less sugar-coating for. Why? Because they are the more engaged and involved, in my experience. Consequently not only do they already know if something is working or not but they probably have a good idea why. They know what is expected of them in order to make things work and they'll know when they've let the side down. The ones that you have to have the frank conversations with - and again this is my personal perspective - are those that don't get fully involved, treat you like a supplier rather than a consultant, and all too often simply don't get it.”
Is sugar-coating necessary?
So does this mean that I’m personally in a small minority of people who are genuinely prepared to take the ‘truth’ gamble? Maybe it’s my advancing years (middle age is not only knocking on the door, it’s half way through it), the experience that goes along with that and the fact that I’m well passed playing the turd polishing game, or maybe I’m just naive and stupid...and don’t actually own a company and have to pay salaries even if it loses a client. But I’m starting to wonder whether many PR people are so blinded by the ‘spin’ of everyday life that the thought of telling a client the stone-cold truth and potentially upsetting them actually sends them into a tailspin of blind panic, leading them to sugar-coat things that really shouldn’t be delivered with such a sweet taste.
Sean also has a take on this. He says: “There are two motives for sugar-coating. One is that there are some people in PR who are pathologically incapable of dealing with bad news or being honest in the face of failure, and fear losing a client at all costs. The other is the realisation that the person you are talking to will not - no matter how carefully you explain things to them - accept that there are going to be times when things fail because of their lack of involvement, or their over-involvement. They will constantly seek to point the finger of blame at you. Consequently, you have a choice to make - do you risk a confrontation with someone who will never treat you like an equal, or do you suck it up, dress it up and sugar-coat the pill?”
The customer is not always right
Sean also has a take on this. He says: “There are two motives for sugar-coating. One is that there are some people in PR who are pathologically incapable of dealing with bad news or being honest in the face of failure, and fear losing a client at all costs. The other is the realisation that the person you are talking to will not - no matter how carefully you explain things to them - accept that there are going to be times when things fail because of their lack of involvement, or their over-involvement. They will constantly seek to point the finger of blame at you. Consequently, you have a choice to make - do you risk a confrontation with someone who will never treat you like an equal, or do you suck it up, dress it up and sugar-coat the pill?”
The customer is not always right
Darika Ahrens, another equally successful and experienced consultant, has a different take on things, however. “This is not a ‘customer is always right’ scenario”, she says. “When I worked (many years ago) on a makeup counter it didn’t matter if the client left the store with the blue eye shadow and red lipstick I’d counselled against if it made them happy. Agency work is, however, consultative and involves a lot of time and money. Brand reputations are often at stake. Yet time and time again agencies let their clients head to the ball looking like an extra from Dynasty. If a client doesn’t listen to advice I’d suggest a serious re-examination of your abilities to communicate ideas or even build trusted relationships. If, hand on heart, the client really just refuses to take your recommendations then the relationship has broken down past the point of serving either party. Resign the account. Any agency who bills a client for a half-arsed idea then defends themselves after it’s failed with a weak spirited “I told you so” should plain get out the game.”
But what about you: when it comes to client relationships, what’s honestly more important to you? Is it keeping a client happy and paying the bill, or pointing out when they make decisions that minimise the impact of campaigns? Leave a comment anonymously if you feel more comfortable. And if you work client-side, what’s your take?
But what about you: when it comes to client relationships, what’s honestly more important to you? Is it keeping a client happy and paying the bill, or pointing out when they make decisions that minimise the impact of campaigns? Leave a comment anonymously if you feel more comfortable. And if you work client-side, what’s your take?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
October 17, 07:43 AM
If I say the word ‘smartphone’, what’s the first thing that comes into your head? What about ‘tablet’? Apple is ubiquitous. iThis, iThat, iEverything. And with the sad death of Steve Jobs a couple of weeks ago, never has it been so in the limelight. But here’s news: Apple isn’t the centre of the universe.
When it landed at number two in the Coolbrands list recently, it wasn’t really a surprise. Apple is immense when it comes not only to being innovative, but in being seen to be innovative. It’s had a tremendous impact on the tech, communications and even product design fields over the last ten years, and it deserves its place in that list. But is it really the be all and end all of the IT and mobile comms industries?
Although I have massive respect for everything that Apple has achieved, the continuous, blind worship of every single piece of product development and, lately, every minor announcement to come out of Cupertino, California, is getting a bit tedious. Twitter becomes practically impenetrable every time there’s an iPhone update, and as for last week’s iOS5 release...don’t get me started: I really don’t need an update on download progress every five minutes. It’s fair to say that Apple can do very little wrong in the eyes of its faithful devotees and, even when things don’t go so well, there is such huge love for the brand that things seem to be forgiven and forgotten very quickly. It’s an envious position, but could the ubiquity and success of the iBrand and the almost blind dedication of iFans be stifling tech elsewhere?
The likes of Samsung and HTC would undoubtedly rebuke that question, with the former reported to have sold 30 million of its superb Galaxy S and Galaxy SII smartphones since launch and the latter having recently introduced the awesome Sensation, in due course set to take over from the Desire as the UK’s most popular Android handset. In the UK, the iPhone holds just 9% of the smartphone market, with Android leading the way at 13% and even BlackBerry having 10%. So why are we so iObsessed?
The one company that sums up this obsession to me is Instagram. I’ve written before about how I feel that Instagram is in real danger of missing the boat if it continues to focus solely on the iPhone and keeps delaying the launch of an Android app, but beyond that it’s a good example of this fixation with everything Apple even when the majority of the UK population prefer other platforms. Crowd Media asked a question on Facebook the other day: "we are massive Apple fans and are loving the newly released iOS5. So come on, let's sort this out. Which type of smartphone really is the best?" Despite the leading nature of the question, the iPhone still only polled only 52% of the vote, with Android on 43% and Palm (?!) on 5%. I just have to question the validity of Apple worship.
But you tell me: why are we so iObsessed? Am I the only one who’s sick of reading about Apple?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
When it landed at number two in the Coolbrands list recently, it wasn’t really a surprise. Apple is immense when it comes not only to being innovative, but in being seen to be innovative. It’s had a tremendous impact on the tech, communications and even product design fields over the last ten years, and it deserves its place in that list. But is it really the be all and end all of the IT and mobile comms industries?
Although I have massive respect for everything that Apple has achieved, the continuous, blind worship of every single piece of product development and, lately, every minor announcement to come out of Cupertino, California, is getting a bit tedious. Twitter becomes practically impenetrable every time there’s an iPhone update, and as for last week’s iOS5 release...don’t get me started: I really don’t need an update on download progress every five minutes. It’s fair to say that Apple can do very little wrong in the eyes of its faithful devotees and, even when things don’t go so well, there is such huge love for the brand that things seem to be forgiven and forgotten very quickly. It’s an envious position, but could the ubiquity and success of the iBrand and the almost blind dedication of iFans be stifling tech elsewhere?
The likes of Samsung and HTC would undoubtedly rebuke that question, with the former reported to have sold 30 million of its superb Galaxy S and Galaxy SII smartphones since launch and the latter having recently introduced the awesome Sensation, in due course set to take over from the Desire as the UK’s most popular Android handset. In the UK, the iPhone holds just 9% of the smartphone market, with Android leading the way at 13% and even BlackBerry having 10%. So why are we so iObsessed?
The one company that sums up this obsession to me is Instagram. I’ve written before about how I feel that Instagram is in real danger of missing the boat if it continues to focus solely on the iPhone and keeps delaying the launch of an Android app, but beyond that it’s a good example of this fixation with everything Apple even when the majority of the UK population prefer other platforms. Crowd Media asked a question on Facebook the other day: "we are massive Apple fans and are loving the newly released iOS5. So come on, let's sort this out. Which type of smartphone really is the best?" Despite the leading nature of the question, the iPhone still only polled only 52% of the vote, with Android on 43% and Palm (?!) on 5%. I just have to question the validity of Apple worship.
But you tell me: why are we so iObsessed? Am I the only one who’s sick of reading about Apple?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
October 09, 11:46 AM
This morning, I ‘hung out’ with two of the world’s most awesome individuals on Google+. And I’m not talking Chris Brogan or Brian Solis or any of those other social media 'gurus’, I’m talking two of the planet’s real life, bona fide truly great men. For at 9.30am His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu took to the web’s newest social network for an hour’s live chat from India and South Africa respectively.
I’ve long been an admirer of Buddhist psychology and philosophy, and have read several books written with and about the Dalai Lama, but I tuned in today more out of curiosity than anything else. I wanted to witness how a Google+ hangout could work in practice to connect people around the entire world to a live video-chat event. It was ‘an experience’.
From farce to fantastic
The first ten minutes were a complete farce. The webcam at Archbishop Tutu’s end was pointing to a room of people whom he was addressing at his Peace Lecture in Cape Town and the microphone was picking up ambient noise (see below). So not only could we not see Archbishop Tutu, we couldn’t hear him either. People were commenting in Google+ as the video streamed with questions like ‘is it in English?’. The Dalai Lama sat patiently in India looking completely nonplussed and more than a little bored. Had it not been for my experimental curiosity I’d have tuned out. But I hung in there (no pun intended)...and I’m glad I did.
Once Archbishop Tutu had finished his address, he took a seat with an interviewer and someone had the bright idea to point the webcam at him and connect him up to a microphone. And off we went.
What followed was 45 minutes of genuinely interesting and heart-warming conversation between two elderly gentleman who spoke more sense and wisdom in less than an hour than I’ve heard in the last ten years. The video streaming in from India was at times patchy, but the discussion was such that it really didn’t matter.
Warmth, grace and humour
Archbishop Tutu is a man of great humour and genuine warmth, with a wicked laugh. He poked fun at the Dalai Lama for being “mischievous” and “not even being able to speak English properly”. The Dalai Lama, who I have long wanted to see speak ‘live’, was equally playful and affectionate, and the friendship between the two was obvious for all to see. Both men clearly have a huge capacity for compassion and life-affirming grace.
The standout moment for me was when Archbishop Tutu asked the Dalai Lama: “Do you have an army?” It seemed an odd question, and it clearly took His Holiness by surprise. But he chuckled and replied warmly: “Yes. But I have no weapons. I have wisdom and compassion.” “The reason I ask”, said Archbishop Tutu, “is that I’d like to know why the Chinese government fears you”. It was a fantastic moment full of simple clarity. But it was the Dalai Lama’s response that I will always remember.
“It’s simple”, he said. “Some Chinese officials have described me as a demon. So naturally there is some fear. Hypocrisy and telling lies is part of their lives, so when someone tells the truth, they feel uncomfortable. So they think I’m a demon.” And then, as if to demonstrate the point, he put two fingers to his head as if horns and laughed into the camera.
The image of this resplendent, warm gentleman playfully mimicking a devil seemed to put things totally into context. And I only wish the Chinese people could have seen it. “1.3 billion Chinese people should know the reality and be able to judge for themselves what is right”, he continued. “For this reason, censorship is immoral.”
Do Hangouts have potential?
It seems almost blasé to turn attention back to the technology after that, but the reason I tuned in was, as I say, to see how an organised hangout could work in practice. And aside from the technical issues of the first ten minutes, I have to say this was a complete success. It was immediately obvious that this technology can be adapted and utilised by organisations, brands and companies to get closer to their advocates, supporters, fans and customers. If social communications is all about being open, honest and genuine, what better way is there than to host live Q&A sessions or topic-specific discussions to which anyone (with a Google+ profile, at least) can observe and take part it?
Prior to this morning, I was sceptical about hangouts for anything other than casual video-chats between friends and informal meetings over the web. But now I can see massive potential. And once Google+ business profiles launch and the platform starts to become more embedded in a mainstream audience (which may itself take many, many months or even years), hangouts could become a powerful tool in a company’s armoury. I for one will be watching developments closely.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
I’ve long been an admirer of Buddhist psychology and philosophy, and have read several books written with and about the Dalai Lama, but I tuned in today more out of curiosity than anything else. I wanted to witness how a Google+ hangout could work in practice to connect people around the entire world to a live video-chat event. It was ‘an experience’.
From farce to fantastic
The first ten minutes were a complete farce. The webcam at Archbishop Tutu’s end was pointing to a room of people whom he was addressing at his Peace Lecture in Cape Town and the microphone was picking up ambient noise (see below). So not only could we not see Archbishop Tutu, we couldn’t hear him either. People were commenting in Google+ as the video streamed with questions like ‘is it in English?’. The Dalai Lama sat patiently in India looking completely nonplussed and more than a little bored. Had it not been for my experimental curiosity I’d have tuned out. But I hung in there (no pun intended)...and I’m glad I did.
Once Archbishop Tutu had finished his address, he took a seat with an interviewer and someone had the bright idea to point the webcam at him and connect him up to a microphone. And off we went.
What followed was 45 minutes of genuinely interesting and heart-warming conversation between two elderly gentleman who spoke more sense and wisdom in less than an hour than I’ve heard in the last ten years. The video streaming in from India was at times patchy, but the discussion was such that it really didn’t matter.
Warmth, grace and humour
Archbishop Tutu is a man of great humour and genuine warmth, with a wicked laugh. He poked fun at the Dalai Lama for being “mischievous” and “not even being able to speak English properly”. The Dalai Lama, who I have long wanted to see speak ‘live’, was equally playful and affectionate, and the friendship between the two was obvious for all to see. Both men clearly have a huge capacity for compassion and life-affirming grace.
The standout moment for me was when Archbishop Tutu asked the Dalai Lama: “Do you have an army?” It seemed an odd question, and it clearly took His Holiness by surprise. But he chuckled and replied warmly: “Yes. But I have no weapons. I have wisdom and compassion.” “The reason I ask”, said Archbishop Tutu, “is that I’d like to know why the Chinese government fears you”. It was a fantastic moment full of simple clarity. But it was the Dalai Lama’s response that I will always remember.
“It’s simple”, he said. “Some Chinese officials have described me as a demon. So naturally there is some fear. Hypocrisy and telling lies is part of their lives, so when someone tells the truth, they feel uncomfortable. So they think I’m a demon.” And then, as if to demonstrate the point, he put two fingers to his head as if horns and laughed into the camera.
The image of this resplendent, warm gentleman playfully mimicking a devil seemed to put things totally into context. And I only wish the Chinese people could have seen it. “1.3 billion Chinese people should know the reality and be able to judge for themselves what is right”, he continued. “For this reason, censorship is immoral.”
Do Hangouts have potential?
It seems almost blasé to turn attention back to the technology after that, but the reason I tuned in was, as I say, to see how an organised hangout could work in practice. And aside from the technical issues of the first ten minutes, I have to say this was a complete success. It was immediately obvious that this technology can be adapted and utilised by organisations, brands and companies to get closer to their advocates, supporters, fans and customers. If social communications is all about being open, honest and genuine, what better way is there than to host live Q&A sessions or topic-specific discussions to which anyone (with a Google+ profile, at least) can observe and take part it?
Prior to this morning, I was sceptical about hangouts for anything other than casual video-chats between friends and informal meetings over the web. But now I can see massive potential. And once Google+ business profiles launch and the platform starts to become more embedded in a mainstream audience (which may itself take many, many months or even years), hangouts could become a powerful tool in a company’s armoury. I for one will be watching developments closely.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
October 05, 02:00 AM
Renowned thought leader Edward De Bono was reported on an Australian news site this week as stating that “social networks are making people lazy and stupid”. My immediate reaction was the knee-jerk ‘what an ignorant, generalising idiot’ of most of my contemporaries in social media land. But when I stopped to think about it, it occurred to me that we would say that as we’re all heavy users who gain and an awful lot from social networks, right? We’re biased. So could there be something in what he says?
Leaving aside the sensationalist assertions of laziness and stupidity (which look like they may have been paraphrased in any case), the article quotes De Bono as saying that people take the information they receive through social media at face value. It says he feels that people are forgoing decision making and creative thinking in favour of information gleaned online and from social media. It’s hardly news that we live in an increasingly information-rich culture, that we are being encouraged to share more and more details of our lives, from where we’ve been and what we’ve done to what we think, informed or otherwise. So is it therefore such a huge leap to posit that today’s data-led media results in a portion of society who believe most of what they read on Twitter or Facebook and base their choices on this?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
Leaving aside the sensationalist assertions of laziness and stupidity (which look like they may have been paraphrased in any case), the article quotes De Bono as saying that people take the information they receive through social media at face value. It says he feels that people are forgoing decision making and creative thinking in favour of information gleaned online and from social media. It’s hardly news that we live in an increasingly information-rich culture, that we are being encouraged to share more and more details of our lives, from where we’ve been and what we’ve done to what we think, informed or otherwise. So is it therefore such a huge leap to posit that today’s data-led media results in a portion of society who believe most of what they read on Twitter or Facebook and base their choices on this?
Poor phrasing, valid point?
It is undoubtedly a gross generalisation to postulate that society as a whole is becoming incapable of independent thought or rationalisation, or that the ability to research new ideas and opinions is dying. And where De Bono really goes off the rails (in my opinion) is where he says that school, rather than online, is better for creative thinking. Surely the two work best in synergy? And when he admits that he doesn’t actually use social media himself as he doesn’t want to be “bullied by information”, I can feel my ‘ignorant idiot’ hackles start to rise again.
But looking beyond the poorly set out nature of his argument, maybe the underlying message isn’t too far from the truth. Amber Naslund challenged her readers on the same day to forget looking for tools and seeking out endless information. She challenged them to take the initiative, roll up their sleeves and to think through problems by asking questions, creating and being accountable. Her message was very similar to De Bono: use social media for your benefit, but stop taking online information at face value, question what you read, and learn.
It’s easy when you work within social media and are experienced at heavy use and analysis not to see beyond the bubble of other people who work within social media and are experienced at heavy use and analysis. But we really are the minority. Let’s not forget, and this is very important, that social media is only a tool. But it’s a game-changing tool and people use it in different ways. Are social networks making people lazy and stupid? Of course not, and that’s a ridiculous assertion. But they are changing the way in which we find information and make decisions. What do you make of De Bono’s thoughts?
But looking beyond the poorly set out nature of his argument, maybe the underlying message isn’t too far from the truth. Amber Naslund challenged her readers on the same day to forget looking for tools and seeking out endless information. She challenged them to take the initiative, roll up their sleeves and to think through problems by asking questions, creating and being accountable. Her message was very similar to De Bono: use social media for your benefit, but stop taking online information at face value, question what you read, and learn.
It’s easy when you work within social media and are experienced at heavy use and analysis not to see beyond the bubble of other people who work within social media and are experienced at heavy use and analysis. But we really are the minority. Let’s not forget, and this is very important, that social media is only a tool. But it’s a game-changing tool and people use it in different ways. Are social networks making people lazy and stupid? Of course not, and that’s a ridiculous assertion. But they are changing the way in which we find information and make decisions. What do you make of De Bono’s thoughts?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
October 06, 04:19 AM
I’ve noticed an extremely disturbing affect of the new Facebook newsfeed timeline on scheduled posts, and one that page administrators have no choice but to take extremely seriously. Across the dozen or so Facebook pages on which I’m an administrator, Impressions (the number of times a post is displayed) on posts scheduled via Hootsuite are down by up to 98%. Furthermore, Impressions of non-scheduled posts containing a picture or link are down by up to 78%. And if page owners don’t wise up to this, it could spell disaster for brands and companies across Facebook.
The example below is typical of what I’m seeing since Facebook introduced the new timeline. This particular page has a community that has grown from 130 to 1800 fans in five weeks, driven by extremely high engagement levels that average 1.7% per post. The lower post is normal for this page: 2500 Impressions with 30 Interactions. The upper post is what happens when posts are scheduled using Hootsuite: only 75 Impressions. Recent non-scheduled posts containing pictures (normally considered a great way of encouraging engagement) have typically received only 500 to 700 Impressions.
The affect does seem to vary across pages. Whereas some, such as this example, are suffering immensely, others are seeing a far less pronounced impact. But I’m not the only one noticing a significant decline in brand/page activity on Facebook. Simply Zesty recently wrote about concerns that had been expressed to them from businesses very worried that Impressions are way down and that “business pages are barely showing up in user’s feeds any more”.
What’s going on?
I’m unsure at present whether the scheduling affect is limited to Hootsuite, although from my own recent experiences in the newsfeed, I don’t believe this to be the case. Just this week I noticed that the pages I normally see posts from were disappearing. In one instance, I read a status posted using Argyle Social and noticed that there was a ‘see 4 more posts from Argyle’ link – on clicking it, 4 more posts appeared from different pages using the same application that were hidden and that I would never have seen. So it would appear that Facebook grouping together posts is not limited to links or subject areas. And this could explain the dramatic nosedive in newsfeed Impressions for those using social tools.
Another factor may be Facebook’s new Top Story function, where an algorithm decides what it considers to be the most relevant stories in your newsfeed at any given time and displays these at the top of the feed. With Facebook increasingly focusing on connecting ‘people with people’ rather than ‘people with pages’, posts by brands and organisations don’t score highly. As I write this, I have to scroll through a huge 55 posts by friends before I see the first post by a page. And how often are you going to do that?
The future
Facebook is obviously in a state of flux at present. The newsfeed has changed beyond recognition and the new timeline profiles are being rolled out. And I refuse to believe that Facebook doesn’t have something up its sleeve for brands, organisations and page administrators. But it needs to do something quickly to address these issues, as advertisers simply won’t continue to put their money into a platform where interaction is falling off a cliff.
Monitoring feedback on every post is starting to become essential, while post scheduling has become unviable as an option for page management until something changes dramatically. But when that will be, who knows. Still, there’s always the forthcoming Google+ business pages, right?
Update 6th October: I've been in dialogue with Hootsuite on Twitter to try and get some clarity on this issue, but unfortunately they won't give me a straight answer. If and when they do I'll let you know.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
The example below is typical of what I’m seeing since Facebook introduced the new timeline. This particular page has a community that has grown from 130 to 1800 fans in five weeks, driven by extremely high engagement levels that average 1.7% per post. The lower post is normal for this page: 2500 Impressions with 30 Interactions. The upper post is what happens when posts are scheduled using Hootsuite: only 75 Impressions. Recent non-scheduled posts containing pictures (normally considered a great way of encouraging engagement) have typically received only 500 to 700 Impressions.
The affect does seem to vary across pages. Whereas some, such as this example, are suffering immensely, others are seeing a far less pronounced impact. But I’m not the only one noticing a significant decline in brand/page activity on Facebook. Simply Zesty recently wrote about concerns that had been expressed to them from businesses very worried that Impressions are way down and that “business pages are barely showing up in user’s feeds any more”.
What’s going on?
I’m unsure at present whether the scheduling affect is limited to Hootsuite, although from my own recent experiences in the newsfeed, I don’t believe this to be the case. Just this week I noticed that the pages I normally see posts from were disappearing. In one instance, I read a status posted using Argyle Social and noticed that there was a ‘see 4 more posts from Argyle’ link – on clicking it, 4 more posts appeared from different pages using the same application that were hidden and that I would never have seen. So it would appear that Facebook grouping together posts is not limited to links or subject areas. And this could explain the dramatic nosedive in newsfeed Impressions for those using social tools.
Another factor may be Facebook’s new Top Story function, where an algorithm decides what it considers to be the most relevant stories in your newsfeed at any given time and displays these at the top of the feed. With Facebook increasingly focusing on connecting ‘people with people’ rather than ‘people with pages’, posts by brands and organisations don’t score highly. As I write this, I have to scroll through a huge 55 posts by friends before I see the first post by a page. And how often are you going to do that?
The future
Facebook is obviously in a state of flux at present. The newsfeed has changed beyond recognition and the new timeline profiles are being rolled out. And I refuse to believe that Facebook doesn’t have something up its sleeve for brands, organisations and page administrators. But it needs to do something quickly to address these issues, as advertisers simply won’t continue to put their money into a platform where interaction is falling off a cliff.
Monitoring feedback on every post is starting to become essential, while post scheduling has become unviable as an option for page management until something changes dramatically. But when that will be, who knows. Still, there’s always the forthcoming Google+ business pages, right?
Update 6th October: I've been in dialogue with Hootsuite on Twitter to try and get some clarity on this issue, but unfortunately they won't give me a straight answer. If and when they do I'll let you know.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
September 30, 04:14 AM
The role of the social web in changing not only how we view the world and the people around us, but also in changing society itself has been well-documented and debated. An interesting study by AXA to launch its Ambition Awards seems to add fuel to the fire of the debate, suggesting as it does that nearly nine out of ten of 11 year olds feel that social media has an important role to play in shaping their online brand. By the age of 18, most people deem it as ‘very important’.
As both someone working in social communications and as a father, I find this astounding. The closest thing I got to personal branding at aged 11 was what football team I supported and what sweets I bought with my pocket money. And yet, according to AXA’s study, 18% of this age group use a professional photo as their profile picture, with friending people they don’t know, exaggerating social activities and personal details, and de-tagging unflattering photos all a part of everyday social media life to today’s pre-teens.
When combined with the ever-increasing speed and demands of technological development, there is understandable concern about how our children will grow up. Will their literacy levels be sub-standard due to txt speak and short-format electronic media? Will their real-life social skills be under-developed due to their reliance on Facebook, mobile and instant messaging as a form of communication? Will their ability to determine the difference between well thought-out arguments validated by source data be compromised by skim-reading of sensationalist headlines?
In fact, there is evidence from the likes of South Korea that the decision-making ability of today’s wired youngsters will be far superior to our own and that, actually, their communication skills will be more ‘efficient’. The area that concerns me most as a father is not falling IQs as a result of a reliance on collective intelligence, or online vanity (we all do it, right?), it’s the quality issue.
Social platforms and mobile devices are built around short and sweet snippets of shared information that do not and simply cannot convey context. It’s easy to take a tweet the wrong way, to judge a person’s Facebook update without knowing their mood, to take a blog headline/intro as gospel without reading a full post or checking source data. And over time, surely that will cheapen the very platforms on which these communications take place? Added to this, the very nature of today’s always-on, fast-moving, transient media must surely have an effect on our kids ability to stick at something and their drive to achieve set goals. AXA’s study would also seem to bear this out.
But that’s just my opinion. Are you a mother or a father? How do you feel about the impact that the social web and technology is having on your children? Please leave a comment…
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
As both someone working in social communications and as a father, I find this astounding. The closest thing I got to personal branding at aged 11 was what football team I supported and what sweets I bought with my pocket money. And yet, according to AXA’s study, 18% of this age group use a professional photo as their profile picture, with friending people they don’t know, exaggerating social activities and personal details, and de-tagging unflattering photos all a part of everyday social media life to today’s pre-teens.
When combined with the ever-increasing speed and demands of technological development, there is understandable concern about how our children will grow up. Will their literacy levels be sub-standard due to txt speak and short-format electronic media? Will their real-life social skills be under-developed due to their reliance on Facebook, mobile and instant messaging as a form of communication? Will their ability to determine the difference between well thought-out arguments validated by source data be compromised by skim-reading of sensationalist headlines?
In fact, there is evidence from the likes of South Korea that the decision-making ability of today’s wired youngsters will be far superior to our own and that, actually, their communication skills will be more ‘efficient’. The area that concerns me most as a father is not falling IQs as a result of a reliance on collective intelligence, or online vanity (we all do it, right?), it’s the quality issue.
Social platforms and mobile devices are built around short and sweet snippets of shared information that do not and simply cannot convey context. It’s easy to take a tweet the wrong way, to judge a person’s Facebook update without knowing their mood, to take a blog headline/intro as gospel without reading a full post or checking source data. And over time, surely that will cheapen the very platforms on which these communications take place? Added to this, the very nature of today’s always-on, fast-moving, transient media must surely have an effect on our kids ability to stick at something and their drive to achieve set goals. AXA’s study would also seem to bear this out.
But that’s just my opinion. Are you a mother or a father? How do you feel about the impact that the social web and technology is having on your children? Please leave a comment…
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
September 28, 04:41 AM
I’ve not hidden the fact that I really dislike QR codes in the past. I don’t have an issue with the concept: directing people from an offline ad straight to a website or app with one swipe of a smartphone is great marketing. But what I do have an issue with is that a) the technology is immature, and b) marketers really do not understand how or when to use it.
Take the example here that I discovered on the London Underground today. Yes, the Underground. Which, last time I checked, was ‘under the ground’. Which means there’s no mobile signal. Which means even the most brilliant piece of QR code marketing will not work. Which means that the chances of me ‘finding my perfect job’ are, I’d say, quite limited. And I’m just guessing here, but I reckon that Success Appointments’ ad campaign won’t be that, well, successful.
It’s naive and nonsensical marketing; using technology for the sake of using technology. In this instance, even despite the fact that the poster is underground, I had to stand in the tunnel like a lemon for a few minutes waiting for people to pass just so I could take this picture. Would I have waited there and then bent double to actually scan the code? No. Not today, not ever.
And this is compounded by the code itself. Look at it: how complex is that?! Anyone who’s produced a QR code in anger will know that you need to make it as simple as possible for a QR reader to identify, and that there are certain techniques you use to optimise it and ensure this. I didn’t try it for the aforementioned citrus-related reasons, but I reckon it’d would’ve taken a great degree of dexterity and an even greater degree of patience to get that code working.
So come on marketers, isn’t it about time we wised up? If you’re thinking about using a QR code, please think about the context in which it will be displayed and whether or not anyone’s likely to scan it. If they’re not, you’re wasting valuable advertising real estate and your brand’s money in equal measure.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
Take the example here that I discovered on the London Underground today. Yes, the Underground. Which, last time I checked, was ‘under the ground’. Which means there’s no mobile signal. Which means even the most brilliant piece of QR code marketing will not work. Which means that the chances of me ‘finding my perfect job’ are, I’d say, quite limited. And I’m just guessing here, but I reckon that Success Appointments’ ad campaign won’t be that, well, successful.
It’s naive and nonsensical marketing; using technology for the sake of using technology. In this instance, even despite the fact that the poster is underground, I had to stand in the tunnel like a lemon for a few minutes waiting for people to pass just so I could take this picture. Would I have waited there and then bent double to actually scan the code? No. Not today, not ever.
And this is compounded by the code itself. Look at it: how complex is that?! Anyone who’s produced a QR code in anger will know that you need to make it as simple as possible for a QR reader to identify, and that there are certain techniques you use to optimise it and ensure this. I didn’t try it for the aforementioned citrus-related reasons, but I reckon it’d would’ve taken a great degree of dexterity and an even greater degree of patience to get that code working.
So come on marketers, isn’t it about time we wised up? If you’re thinking about using a QR code, please think about the context in which it will be displayed and whether or not anyone’s likely to scan it. If they’re not, you’re wasting valuable advertising real estate and your brand’s money in equal measure.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
September 15, 07:02 AM
Brands and organisations are all clamouring to create an effective Facebook presence. 750 million users, 2.6 million minutes spent on the site every day, 2/3 of brands have acquired a new customer through the site - you’ve heard all the compelling statistics. So what’s the big enigma about making it work for you: content strategy? Creative campaigns? Optimum rate and timing of posts? No, the secret is the feel-good factor.
The big thing that Facebook has going for it more than any other marketing channel (and I include Twitter and other social media in that too) is that, if done well, it can create a genuine and positive ongoing emotional response. And if social communications’ major impact is on attitudes and beliefs in order to positively influence the decision making process, then the holy grail of Facebook marketing is to generate warmth, affection and conviviality in how customers and potential customers feel about and perceive a brand. The good news is that this can work in any industry, from FMCG through to professional services. And there’s currently a fantastic example of this principle in action from an unlikely source.
First Direct, the UK internet bank, was relatively late to the Facebook party, only launching its page on 30th June this year. And yet in just two months it has demonstrated a total understanding of the mindset of social communications, it has built and harnessed a 3400-strong community of loyal and vocal brand advocates, and it has done what few others have got anywhere near on Facebook: it has created an overwhelmingly positive, upbeat and warm feeling on its page. The first status update the bank posted said: “...we’re constantly looking for new ways to have conversations with our fans. Not just about banking, but about all the other fabulous things in life...” And it has done just what it set out to do, seamlessly blending posts about its services and corporate updates (always written in a chatty and conversational manner) with competitions and general interest chatter about the Wimbledon tennis championships, the arrival of summer, charities, the new Harry Potter film and The X Factor, among others.
First Direct’s Facebook page is a fantastic example to any organisation in any sector of how to build an online community and how to create brand warmth. I have attempted on many occasions to explain to companies that in order to be successful on Facebook they must talk how friends talk and about topics that friends talk about. Sometimes that has been met with success but sometimes with abject failure. It simply does not fit into most marketers’ comprehension that talking to their fans about The X Factor can have any benefit. But First Direct proves the point beyond any doubt. Tap into the mindset of your Facebook fans, create a feel-good factor and the platform will come alive for you.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
The big thing that Facebook has going for it more than any other marketing channel (and I include Twitter and other social media in that too) is that, if done well, it can create a genuine and positive ongoing emotional response. And if social communications’ major impact is on attitudes and beliefs in order to positively influence the decision making process, then the holy grail of Facebook marketing is to generate warmth, affection and conviviality in how customers and potential customers feel about and perceive a brand. The good news is that this can work in any industry, from FMCG through to professional services. And there’s currently a fantastic example of this principle in action from an unlikely source.
First Direct, the UK internet bank, was relatively late to the Facebook party, only launching its page on 30th June this year. And yet in just two months it has demonstrated a total understanding of the mindset of social communications, it has built and harnessed a 3400-strong community of loyal and vocal brand advocates, and it has done what few others have got anywhere near on Facebook: it has created an overwhelmingly positive, upbeat and warm feeling on its page. The first status update the bank posted said: “...we’re constantly looking for new ways to have conversations with our fans. Not just about banking, but about all the other fabulous things in life...” And it has done just what it set out to do, seamlessly blending posts about its services and corporate updates (always written in a chatty and conversational manner) with competitions and general interest chatter about the Wimbledon tennis championships, the arrival of summer, charities, the new Harry Potter film and The X Factor, among others.
First Direct’s Facebook page is a fantastic example to any organisation in any sector of how to build an online community and how to create brand warmth. I have attempted on many occasions to explain to companies that in order to be successful on Facebook they must talk how friends talk and about topics that friends talk about. Sometimes that has been met with success but sometimes with abject failure. It simply does not fit into most marketers’ comprehension that talking to their fans about The X Factor can have any benefit. But First Direct proves the point beyond any doubt. Tap into the mindset of your Facebook fans, create a feel-good factor and the platform will come alive for you.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
September 12, 12:28 PM
The social web’s a bit like a wedding reception. You get all sorts of people on the dance floor, from those who love it and to whom it’s a second home, to those who are clearly not enjoying themselves and are only dancing because everyone else is. And the different types of people are fairly easy to spot. Which one are you?
The wallflower – they like to watch more than to take part. Maybe they’re shy or unconfident, maybe they’re just taking it all in, listening to the beat and observing others. When they do get on the dance floor, however, they can be rather groovy.
The show off – they’re the most noticeable across the social web, throwing shapes and attracting awe from many but derision from those who know better. Less the life and soul of the party, more the embarrassing uncle.
The shuffler – you don’t know why they’re doing it and, more to the point, neither do they. They go along with whatever the crowd does, whether it’s Bon Jovi, Sister Sledge or the Macarena, but their approach doesn’t change no matter what the tune. The social web is full of them.
The dad dancer – they’re having a good time ‘getting involved with the kids’, but they clearly have no idea. You can’t really knock them for having a go, but you’re kind of grateful when they disappear off to go and chat to Great Aunt Matilda. Facebook’s just not the same when the dad dancer is online.
The clubber – the cool kids who do this week in, week out. They display total confidence, they’re on top of the beat, they pick and choose when to get involved, and they look great whatever they do. But they don’t make a show of it, it’s just who they are.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
The wallflower – they like to watch more than to take part. Maybe they’re shy or unconfident, maybe they’re just taking it all in, listening to the beat and observing others. When they do get on the dance floor, however, they can be rather groovy.
The show off – they’re the most noticeable across the social web, throwing shapes and attracting awe from many but derision from those who know better. Less the life and soul of the party, more the embarrassing uncle.
The shuffler – you don’t know why they’re doing it and, more to the point, neither do they. They go along with whatever the crowd does, whether it’s Bon Jovi, Sister Sledge or the Macarena, but their approach doesn’t change no matter what the tune. The social web is full of them.
The dad dancer – they’re having a good time ‘getting involved with the kids’, but they clearly have no idea. You can’t really knock them for having a go, but you’re kind of grateful when they disappear off to go and chat to Great Aunt Matilda. Facebook’s just not the same when the dad dancer is online.
The clubber – the cool kids who do this week in, week out. They display total confidence, they’re on top of the beat, they pick and choose when to get involved, and they look great whatever they do. But they don’t make a show of it, it’s just who they are.
Are there some wedding guests I've forgotten? Let me know in the comments...
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
September 01, 08:31 AM
This is a guest post by Julie Howell
I have a problem with this. Partly, it’s to do with perspective: clearly, not everyone using a social network is a ‘rioter-enabler’. Partly, it’s to do with the apportioning of blame onto technical infrastructure (where exactly are Goldie Lookin Chain when our industry really needs them? “Twitter doesn’t loot high streets, robbers do”).
Mostly, it’s to do with the interests of those who suffer the most when draconian measures result in the control or closure – even temporarily – of social networks (digital or otherwise).
Social isolation
Social isolation
In 1995, I (albeit unintentionally) established one of the early online communities for people with the disabling neurological condition multiple sclerosis. I have MS myself, so can tell you with some degree of credibility that while MS comes with myriad unpleasant symptoms (sight loss, speech problems, difficulty walking) one of the real and constant challenges that we have to counter every day is the potential for social isolation.
This doesn’t just apply to the 100,000 of us with MS. Add to our number the tens of millions of people who find it difficult to get around because of physical, emotional, mental, social, learning, vision, hearing and cognitive impairments, plus all those affected in one way or another by encroaching age and we’re talking about millions of people. Millions and millions, in fact.
For many (millions) of us, one political party’s ‘rioter-enabling technology’ is our lifeline: our social life, our comfort and our company. Break or restrict our access to it, even for a short amount of time, and for many of us the world really does come to an end. This is not the same as having a day away from Facebook because you’re convinced it’s distracting you from your real life. For an awful lot of people, online social networks truly are our only real life.
Privacy v self expression
This doesn’t just apply to the 100,000 of us with MS. Add to our number the tens of millions of people who find it difficult to get around because of physical, emotional, mental, social, learning, vision, hearing and cognitive impairments, plus all those affected in one way or another by encroaching age and we’re talking about millions of people. Millions and millions, in fact.
For many (millions) of us, one political party’s ‘rioter-enabling technology’ is our lifeline: our social life, our comfort and our company. Break or restrict our access to it, even for a short amount of time, and for many of us the world really does come to an end. This is not the same as having a day away from Facebook because you’re convinced it’s distracting you from your real life. For an awful lot of people, online social networks truly are our only real life.
Privacy v self expression
The riots (and the reporting of the riots, specifically) also moved me to consider whether or not I believe people who use social networks to incite hatred, violence, mischief, etc. are entitled to privacy or is it only right and proper for social network owners to hand over details about users and their activities when the police request it.
From my soap box (PR, disabled person, technophile, former librarian), the gut feeling is 'yes, they broke the law, social networks should cooperate with the police as fully as possible’. At the same time, however, the part of me that wants to strive for positive social change feels uncomfortable about saying it’s okay to stifle anyone's right to express themselves. After all, didn't what happened a couple of weeks ago happen in part because some (young?) people feel disenfranchised? Not listened to? Unable to express how they feel?
My malaise doesn’t stop there as I also feel caught in the headlights of the monster truck of unmet expectation that my generation – indeed my industry – has apparently created (through advertising, PR, etc.), and when I look to see who is behind the wheel my eyes are met by those of my children’s generation. And they are angry. Perhaps rightly so. Ignoring them, locking them up, taking away their means of expression doesn’t feel quite right unless we want what happen in August to happen again and again.
Some reports on the BBC, featured masked (and in some cases unmasked) teens telling us why they were looting (not rioting, looting, stealing). Although they may not have deployed the language of marketing I interpreted what they were saying as a very damning indictment of the (my) generation of marketers and PRs that work on behalf of companies that promote as desirable and achievable a lifestyle that is completely unrealistic an unattainable for most ordinary people.
Either we listen or we lose
From my soap box (PR, disabled person, technophile, former librarian), the gut feeling is 'yes, they broke the law, social networks should cooperate with the police as fully as possible’. At the same time, however, the part of me that wants to strive for positive social change feels uncomfortable about saying it’s okay to stifle anyone's right to express themselves. After all, didn't what happened a couple of weeks ago happen in part because some (young?) people feel disenfranchised? Not listened to? Unable to express how they feel?
My malaise doesn’t stop there as I also feel caught in the headlights of the monster truck of unmet expectation that my generation – indeed my industry – has apparently created (through advertising, PR, etc.), and when I look to see who is behind the wheel my eyes are met by those of my children’s generation. And they are angry. Perhaps rightly so. Ignoring them, locking them up, taking away their means of expression doesn’t feel quite right unless we want what happen in August to happen again and again.
Some reports on the BBC, featured masked (and in some cases unmasked) teens telling us why they were looting (not rioting, looting, stealing). Although they may not have deployed the language of marketing I interpreted what they were saying as a very damning indictment of the (my) generation of marketers and PRs that work on behalf of companies that promote as desirable and achievable a lifestyle that is completely unrealistic an unattainable for most ordinary people.
Either we listen or we lose
So I feel conflicted. On the one hand, I’m very proud to be part of a generation that invented social media and all the social good (and economic opportunity) that has come about as a result of that. On the other, I feel despair if what we have done has to any degree contributed to the social unrest that we witnessed in August 2011.
Perhaps we can start to address both situations through the very simple act of listening more. Any online community moderator will tell you how many lessons they have learned through listening to the voices of community members. They’ll also undoubtedly tell you that banning people or otherwise trying to control anti-social behaviour by excluding the trouble-makers rarely works. People break rule often for complex reasons. If we banned them all, after a while there could be no community left.
If we were as good at facilitating the act of listening as we are at providing platforms for talking, maybe we could herald a new revolution that could bring about positive social change that has real meaning for disaffected kids, indeed, for anyone who feels disenfranchised from arguably the most connected society there has ever been.
Sometimes it takes a revolution.
Julie Howell is an independent PR and communications consultant. Voted winner of New Media Age’s Greatest Individual Contribution to New Media Award in 2005, she is best known for her efforts to make the web a more user-friendly place for disabled people. In her spare time, she runs an online community for people with multiple sclerosis and also blogs about technology for BBC WebWise.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
August 18, 06:27 AM
I’m writing this perched on the floor of a hospital room. Just across from me, my beautiful wife is dozing peacefully in a post- operative slumber. As procedures go, it was what the surgeon referred to as “routine”, but as with all operations there were risks – in this case of paralysis. So for the last couple of weeks I’ve been very on edge about it, all the while trying not to let on to my wife my increasing nerves. If I'm being more honest, I’ve been scared.
I knew the risks of something going wrong were very small. The consultant explained everything to us very clearly and calmly, and left little room for misinterpretation or doubt. But while this should have assuaged my fears as it did those of my wife, as the surgery came closer so did my paranoias and trepidations. With them, however, came rare clarity.
It’s all too easy to get caught up in things that, at the end of the day, just aren’t important. The riots around the UK last week brought shame to a proud nation; like many, they left me personally feeling deeply saddened and justifiably angry. But the perverse spite, intense vitriol and extreme opinions I saw voiced on Facebook from friends who I thought were more intelligent and reasoned left me almost as dismayed as the riots themselves.
A couple of days later, I stumbled across a blog post in the comments of which all-out war seemed to be raging. A well-known blogger gave a strong viewpoint, someone disagreed, someone else backed them up, the blogger got defensive and all hell broke loose with every man and his dog wanting to have their say. It was neither constructive or necessary. And then I heard a story of someone getting absurdly upset because a colleague didn’t wear a tie to a client meeting. It’s all nonsensical. And I have to ask: where does all this aggravated posturing come from?
Having spent the last couple of weeks worrying about my wife and daughter, and the last couple of days surrounded by surgeons and nurses, there’s no shadow of a doubt to me that blog posts, status updates and tweets are really not important in life. I could have responded to the Facebook posts about the riots that upset me or joined in with the blog fight. But how would that possibly have benefited me?
The point is that YOU HAVE A CHOICE.
You have the choice whether or not to feed the comment troll, whether or not to read provocative Facebook posts, whether or not to get involved. The world would be boring if we all had the same opinions, and we’d never learn anything if we didn’t have debates that challenged our beliefs. But you can pick and choose where to have those, when they’re valuable and when they’re not, and how to react if you do.
There’s massive value in having the wisdom to know the difference between constructive debate that leads to learning and self-improvement, and getting involved in a scrap simply because someone has offended your sensibilities. In most cases, turning the other cheek is not only dignified and brave, but it’s also far more beneficial and far less stressful.
So here's a question for you: what really matters to you?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
I knew the risks of something going wrong were very small. The consultant explained everything to us very clearly and calmly, and left little room for misinterpretation or doubt. But while this should have assuaged my fears as it did those of my wife, as the surgery came closer so did my paranoias and trepidations. With them, however, came rare clarity.
It’s all too easy to get caught up in things that, at the end of the day, just aren’t important. The riots around the UK last week brought shame to a proud nation; like many, they left me personally feeling deeply saddened and justifiably angry. But the perverse spite, intense vitriol and extreme opinions I saw voiced on Facebook from friends who I thought were more intelligent and reasoned left me almost as dismayed as the riots themselves.
A couple of days later, I stumbled across a blog post in the comments of which all-out war seemed to be raging. A well-known blogger gave a strong viewpoint, someone disagreed, someone else backed them up, the blogger got defensive and all hell broke loose with every man and his dog wanting to have their say. It was neither constructive or necessary. And then I heard a story of someone getting absurdly upset because a colleague didn’t wear a tie to a client meeting. It’s all nonsensical. And I have to ask: where does all this aggravated posturing come from?
Having spent the last couple of weeks worrying about my wife and daughter, and the last couple of days surrounded by surgeons and nurses, there’s no shadow of a doubt to me that blog posts, status updates and tweets are really not important in life. I could have responded to the Facebook posts about the riots that upset me or joined in with the blog fight. But how would that possibly have benefited me?
The point is that YOU HAVE A CHOICE.
You have the choice whether or not to feed the comment troll, whether or not to read provocative Facebook posts, whether or not to get involved. The world would be boring if we all had the same opinions, and we’d never learn anything if we didn’t have debates that challenged our beliefs. But you can pick and choose where to have those, when they’re valuable and when they’re not, and how to react if you do.
There’s massive value in having the wisdom to know the difference between constructive debate that leads to learning and self-improvement, and getting involved in a scrap simply because someone has offended your sensibilities. In most cases, turning the other cheek is not only dignified and brave, but it’s also far more beneficial and far less stressful.
So here's a question for you: what really matters to you?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
August 08, 07:25 AM
This post is the third in a series reporting the key learnings from my recent #NoSearch project, where I went two months without using an internet search engine.
Search engines have great power over how we perceive the world. Friends, contacts, me, you – we generally use Google or Bing or Yahoo! as one of our first ports of call when we need to know something. And as a result of this, the way we think as human beings is evolving, facilitated by search. A psychologist from Columbia University in New York recently carried out a study which found that, due to the availability of information on the web, we tend to easily forget things that we know we can find again. We're rewiring our brains to remember where we can retrieve information online, rather than remembering the information itself.
It sounds a little far-fetched, right? But as my two months without search engines progressed, I realised that I was adapting to life without Google pretty easily. I found myself asking fewer questions of my networks as time went on and my recall of information and facts improved. And that’s in just a few weeks.
Psychologists believe that the internet has become part of our 'transactive memory', information that we don't recall but know where to retrieve if we need it. Think about URLs for example. One of the biggest challenges I faced at the start of the project was finding websites without typing their name into Google. Could I remember specific URLs? Could I heck! Google’s auto-suggest feature makes remembering website addresses completely unnecessary. URLs are like phone numbers – they’re all plugged into a piece of tech that means we don’t need to remember then anymore. And that itself has huge implications for SEO and digital marketers.
When it comes to SEO, times they are a-changin’. As I said in my last post, social media is taking some of the shine off SEO strategy, and when you throw social search into the mix, the SEO industry is going to have to evolve very fast. I read just last week that around 20% of search results are now social media-driven and/or contain social signals. The fact is that standard search results can be gamed by artificially generating and optimising backlinks, keyword stuffing and the like. But if Google can add a social layer to its results then it’s taking search to a whole new level, and one that’s far more difficult to game. Enter Google+...
Launched smack bang in the middle of the #NoSearch project, Google+ is as much about social search as it is about owning the cloud, and far more important than beating Facebook or Twitter. As Sean McGinnis said in a recent post: “When we use Google+, we are creating data, all of which is within the Google network. It is critical that Google get social right...because social is where the data action is. It’s where we freely give up information about ourselves; where we create the connection nodes that Google can learn from and serve up a better search experience.”
This is spot on. Suddenly the +1 button and displaying social profiles from your friends and contacts with Google accounts on search results make sense. In the near future, Googling won’t return robot-generate results. It’ll return robot-generated results filtered through your own social network. So if you’re interested in SEO, you’d better start sussing out the synergy between search and social and working out how online behaviour is changing, as search is about to get a whole load more personal.
Part four of this series will compare and contrast the responsiveness of the top social networks as information sources.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
Search engines have great power over how we perceive the world. Friends, contacts, me, you – we generally use Google or Bing or Yahoo! as one of our first ports of call when we need to know something. And as a result of this, the way we think as human beings is evolving, facilitated by search. A psychologist from Columbia University in New York recently carried out a study which found that, due to the availability of information on the web, we tend to easily forget things that we know we can find again. We're rewiring our brains to remember where we can retrieve information online, rather than remembering the information itself.
It sounds a little far-fetched, right? But as my two months without search engines progressed, I realised that I was adapting to life without Google pretty easily. I found myself asking fewer questions of my networks as time went on and my recall of information and facts improved. And that’s in just a few weeks.
Psychologists believe that the internet has become part of our 'transactive memory', information that we don't recall but know where to retrieve if we need it. Think about URLs for example. One of the biggest challenges I faced at the start of the project was finding websites without typing their name into Google. Could I remember specific URLs? Could I heck! Google’s auto-suggest feature makes remembering website addresses completely unnecessary. URLs are like phone numbers – they’re all plugged into a piece of tech that means we don’t need to remember then anymore. And that itself has huge implications for SEO and digital marketers.
When it comes to SEO, times they are a-changin’. As I said in my last post, social media is taking some of the shine off SEO strategy, and when you throw social search into the mix, the SEO industry is going to have to evolve very fast. I read just last week that around 20% of search results are now social media-driven and/or contain social signals. The fact is that standard search results can be gamed by artificially generating and optimising backlinks, keyword stuffing and the like. But if Google can add a social layer to its results then it’s taking search to a whole new level, and one that’s far more difficult to game. Enter Google+...
Launched smack bang in the middle of the #NoSearch project, Google+ is as much about social search as it is about owning the cloud, and far more important than beating Facebook or Twitter. As Sean McGinnis said in a recent post: “When we use Google+, we are creating data, all of which is within the Google network. It is critical that Google get social right...because social is where the data action is. It’s where we freely give up information about ourselves; where we create the connection nodes that Google can learn from and serve up a better search experience.”
This is spot on. Suddenly the +1 button and displaying social profiles from your friends and contacts with Google accounts on search results make sense. In the near future, Googling won’t return robot-generate results. It’ll return robot-generated results filtered through your own social network. So if you’re interested in SEO, you’d better start sussing out the synergy between search and social and working out how online behaviour is changing, as search is about to get a whole load more personal.
Part four of this series will compare and contrast the responsiveness of the top social networks as information sources.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
August 04, 05:58 AM
This post is the second in a series reporting the key learnings from my recent #NoSearch project, where I went two months without using an internet search engine.
Social networks enable us to share and find information like never before. We can research, ask friends and carry out polls in minutes. It’s a tangible demonstration of the direction in which society is headed due to the evolution of the web; a form of collective intelligence where we become better informed and make better choices as a result. At least, that’s the theory – whether or not this is the case is probably open to debate. But what I can say having completed the #NoSearch project, is that those using social media effectively have learned how to harness collective intelligence and community.
In fact, without realising it, what these people have done is to build their own 'personal search engine'. And rather than relying on software algorithms, spiders and SEO gaming, it relies on human knowledge, experience, intellect and context. That’s something that no search engine will ever replicate, whether or not the semantic web ever truly becomes reality. When I took a step back from search for a few weeks, what I started to see astounded me. We have absolute blind faith in search engine results and we virtually never question whether what Bing or Yahoo! is showing us is most relevant to what we want. We quite simply trust that search engines give us back the best results. Google has become something of a cult to which we have unquestioning devotion. And this gives it immense power over you and me and the way we perceive the world. And, arguably, responsibility.
One of my key learnings from #NoSearch is that, despite the frustration of the time it takes to look information up without Google or ask questions of your network, the quality of the information that you find when you put that time in is often far superior. And for me, how I find out information has probably changed for good. For expediency, geographic or personal issues, search engines do the job well. But for queries where I don’t need an instant answer, where intricate local knowledge is necessary or where it’s not just too personal, I’ll be continuing, at least in part, to use my personal network as a search engine. And I’m far from alone. A recent McKinsey study suggested that one in three people now use social media to help navigate the web.
Despite what you may initially feel, the key to building an effective personal search engine and harnessing community intelligence is not to garner a large network of connections. From my experience of this issue, everyone has a tolerance level above which the larger your network becomes, the less value you gain from it. Rather, the key is to focus in on the Dunbar’s number of people who you trust and respect; those people from whom you gain maximum value. As with much else in life, relevance is all-important. Do this and you’ll build a community of people around you that gives you access to information on the web like no search engine ever could.
Part three of this series will look at how search engines are changing human behaviour and at the potential impact of social search on SEO.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
Social networks enable us to share and find information like never before. We can research, ask friends and carry out polls in minutes. It’s a tangible demonstration of the direction in which society is headed due to the evolution of the web; a form of collective intelligence where we become better informed and make better choices as a result. At least, that’s the theory – whether or not this is the case is probably open to debate. But what I can say having completed the #NoSearch project, is that those using social media effectively have learned how to harness collective intelligence and community.
In fact, without realising it, what these people have done is to build their own 'personal search engine'. And rather than relying on software algorithms, spiders and SEO gaming, it relies on human knowledge, experience, intellect and context. That’s something that no search engine will ever replicate, whether or not the semantic web ever truly becomes reality. When I took a step back from search for a few weeks, what I started to see astounded me. We have absolute blind faith in search engine results and we virtually never question whether what Bing or Yahoo! is showing us is most relevant to what we want. We quite simply trust that search engines give us back the best results. Google has become something of a cult to which we have unquestioning devotion. And this gives it immense power over you and me and the way we perceive the world. And, arguably, responsibility.
One of my key learnings from #NoSearch is that, despite the frustration of the time it takes to look information up without Google or ask questions of your network, the quality of the information that you find when you put that time in is often far superior. And for me, how I find out information has probably changed for good. For expediency, geographic or personal issues, search engines do the job well. But for queries where I don’t need an instant answer, where intricate local knowledge is necessary or where it’s not just too personal, I’ll be continuing, at least in part, to use my personal network as a search engine. And I’m far from alone. A recent McKinsey study suggested that one in three people now use social media to help navigate the web.
Despite what you may initially feel, the key to building an effective personal search engine and harnessing community intelligence is not to garner a large network of connections. From my experience of this issue, everyone has a tolerance level above which the larger your network becomes, the less value you gain from it. Rather, the key is to focus in on the Dunbar’s number of people who you trust and respect; those people from whom you gain maximum value. As with much else in life, relevance is all-important. Do this and you’ll build a community of people around you that gives you access to information on the web like no search engine ever could.
Part three of this series will look at how search engines are changing human behaviour and at the potential impact of social search on SEO.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
August 02, 06:14 AM
This post is the first in a series reporting the key learnings from my recent #NoSearch project, where I went two months without using an internet search engine.
Do you think internet friendship and being hyper-connected is all it’s cracked up to be?
There have been several posts recently by well-respected bloggers covering the subject of social media fatigue: the feeling of being overwhelmed by the constant demands of your Facebook friends, blogging community and Twitter followers, and that you’re getting little back for the time you’re putting in. And in a recent Observer column by the extremely insightful Aleks Krotoski, she explains that she too feels that “the online world has become increasingly empty”. Having just completed the #NoSearch project, where I’ve been very reliant on my social networks, this is thought-provoking stuff.
Aleks says that as the number of connections she’s made through social networks has grown, she’s started to suffer from what she terms “social network emotional anaemia”, where she’s “no longer receiving the same degree of closeness I feel I need” from the online communities she once loved, and that “my online world is full of strangers with whom I’m too scared to interact”. This description of ultimately meaningless online connections is classic social media fatigue, and it’s something that I personally recognise. Maybe because of #NoSearch and my dependence on social networks over the last nine weeks, maybe just coincidentally, I’ve been experiencing my own social media angst recently. I’ve been growing a little tired of the self-righteous and sycophantic nature of some blogging communities and, conversely, the argumentative and aggressive nature of others. I know, I know...I’m contradicting myself and essentially it’s my problem, not theirs. Suck it up, Sutton.
But from a less gloomy and more constructive perspective, what #NoSearch has taught me is that what Aleks is describing is correct: when it comes to social networks, bigger isn’t better. When I started the experiment, I fully believed that I needed to further expand my networks in order to help me out, with the theory that the larger my number of connections, the greater the collective intelligence and the greater the number and quality of responses I’d receive to any given question. But it’s not true. When you’re using social media as a search engine, it becomes very apparent that the social web is extremely fragmented, and that makes developing closer friendships and finding relevant information far more difficult than it should be when the concept of the web in the first place was to connect us all. So I’d theorise that, beyond a certain level, there’s an inverse relationship between the size of a personal network and its value/usefulness.
Going back to a post I wrote a few weeks ago, there was a fantastic quote I’d read that stands out for me: “When everything’s social, nothing is”. The more details of our lives we share across ever-more platforms, the less impact each ‘share’ has. All the information from all the people merely becomes white noise. And that’s why I love Google+ so much; the effortless ability to filter what you see and hear using Circles. So for me at least, I’ve started to pair down the networks I’m using (goodbye LinkedIn) and started to concentrate more on the people with whom I have friendships and whom I can truly learn from on the social web. #NoSearch tells me that being slightly less social is actually the key to developing meaningful connections.
Part two of this series will look at the power of social networks as ‘personal search engines’.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
Do you think internet friendship and being hyper-connected is all it’s cracked up to be?
There have been several posts recently by well-respected bloggers covering the subject of social media fatigue: the feeling of being overwhelmed by the constant demands of your Facebook friends, blogging community and Twitter followers, and that you’re getting little back for the time you’re putting in. And in a recent Observer column by the extremely insightful Aleks Krotoski, she explains that she too feels that “the online world has become increasingly empty”. Having just completed the #NoSearch project, where I’ve been very reliant on my social networks, this is thought-provoking stuff.
Aleks says that as the number of connections she’s made through social networks has grown, she’s started to suffer from what she terms “social network emotional anaemia”, where she’s “no longer receiving the same degree of closeness I feel I need” from the online communities she once loved, and that “my online world is full of strangers with whom I’m too scared to interact”. This description of ultimately meaningless online connections is classic social media fatigue, and it’s something that I personally recognise. Maybe because of #NoSearch and my dependence on social networks over the last nine weeks, maybe just coincidentally, I’ve been experiencing my own social media angst recently. I’ve been growing a little tired of the self-righteous and sycophantic nature of some blogging communities and, conversely, the argumentative and aggressive nature of others. I know, I know...I’m contradicting myself and essentially it’s my problem, not theirs. Suck it up, Sutton.
But from a less gloomy and more constructive perspective, what #NoSearch has taught me is that what Aleks is describing is correct: when it comes to social networks, bigger isn’t better. When I started the experiment, I fully believed that I needed to further expand my networks in order to help me out, with the theory that the larger my number of connections, the greater the collective intelligence and the greater the number and quality of responses I’d receive to any given question. But it’s not true. When you’re using social media as a search engine, it becomes very apparent that the social web is extremely fragmented, and that makes developing closer friendships and finding relevant information far more difficult than it should be when the concept of the web in the first place was to connect us all. So I’d theorise that, beyond a certain level, there’s an inverse relationship between the size of a personal network and its value/usefulness.
Going back to a post I wrote a few weeks ago, there was a fantastic quote I’d read that stands out for me: “When everything’s social, nothing is”. The more details of our lives we share across ever-more platforms, the less impact each ‘share’ has. All the information from all the people merely becomes white noise. And that’s why I love Google+ so much; the effortless ability to filter what you see and hear using Circles. So for me at least, I’ve started to pair down the networks I’m using (goodbye LinkedIn) and started to concentrate more on the people with whom I have friendships and whom I can truly learn from on the social web. #NoSearch tells me that being slightly less social is actually the key to developing meaningful connections.
Part two of this series will look at the power of social networks as ‘personal search engines’.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
July 27, 11:06 AM
I’ve recently had conversations with a couple of clients and potential clients about the viability of creative ideas. And it’s been playing on my mind that there are PR and marketing agencies out there who sell on their ability to come up with fantastically creative and wacky ideas that, ultimately, deliver very little in the way of real business return barring one splash of coverage. So here’s a question for you: how important do you think creativity is when it comes to online PR and social media marketing?
The thing is, it’s actually pretty easy to come up with brilliantly weird and wonderful ideas, many of which look great on paper. I’ve written before (in an inventive manner) about how to unleash one’s inner creativity, and a quick company brainstorm can throw up some great stuff. But I maintain that most brands or companies simply don’t need the wacky stuff. What they need is solid, grounded, day-to-day activity, stuff that at BOTTLE we call ‘the fundamentals’. The creative concept is important as an overriding layer, but it’s these disciplines that deliver results to the bottom line over the course of any given financial year.
Don’t get me wrong - the big ideas are great for delivering a splash of coverage or a hit of publicity at an opportune time; a product launch or the introduction of a new service, for example. But then what? Coverage dies, and so do enquiries. Most companies don’t have the budget of Skittles to roll out one big idea after another, and so this is simply not a viable option. And yet it’s oh-so-easy to be lured by The Big Idea and the promises that go along with it, rather than a more grounded and, admittedly, less exciting approach. The hare can very easily beat the tortoise.
The skill in both digital and traditional PR is engaging people with creativity while focusing on core business objectives. It’s a slower-burn, but it’s one that reaps great rewards. There’s a time and a place for massive creativity and stunts, and we’ve come up with some corkers at BOTTLE. But the balance has to be right between creativity and implementation and, for some companies, implementation is more important. So over to you: how important do you think creativity is?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
The thing is, it’s actually pretty easy to come up with brilliantly weird and wonderful ideas, many of which look great on paper. I’ve written before (in an inventive manner) about how to unleash one’s inner creativity, and a quick company brainstorm can throw up some great stuff. But I maintain that most brands or companies simply don’t need the wacky stuff. What they need is solid, grounded, day-to-day activity, stuff that at BOTTLE we call ‘the fundamentals’. The creative concept is important as an overriding layer, but it’s these disciplines that deliver results to the bottom line over the course of any given financial year.
Don’t get me wrong - the big ideas are great for delivering a splash of coverage or a hit of publicity at an opportune time; a product launch or the introduction of a new service, for example. But then what? Coverage dies, and so do enquiries. Most companies don’t have the budget of Skittles to roll out one big idea after another, and so this is simply not a viable option. And yet it’s oh-so-easy to be lured by The Big Idea and the promises that go along with it, rather than a more grounded and, admittedly, less exciting approach. The hare can very easily beat the tortoise.
The skill in both digital and traditional PR is engaging people with creativity while focusing on core business objectives. It’s a slower-burn, but it’s one that reaps great rewards. There’s a time and a place for massive creativity and stunts, and we’ve come up with some corkers at BOTTLE. But the balance has to be right between creativity and implementation and, for some companies, implementation is more important. So over to you: how important do you think creativity is?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
July 20, 09:24 AM
There's been an incredible amount of online commentary about Google+, the latest and greatest social platform, over the last few weeks. The vast majority has focused on comparisons to Facebook or Twitter or both, how Circles compares to lists, why it won't work or why it will work. But I think we've all missed the point: for Google, there's an awful lot more at stake than social networks. And it could be that Google is performing a smoke and mirrors trick with G+.
Take a step back from social media for a moment and view Google+ as just one element of Google's strategy. What do you see? GMail, arguably the leading email solution available that works from the cloud. Google Docs, increasingly being used as a collaboration tool and again, stored in the cloud. The Chrome web browser. Android, the fastest growing mobile OS that is likely to take over from Apple within the next 12 months. YouTube, Picassa, Reader and Blogger, all of which work from, guess where? The cloud. Add in Google+ and you now have social networking, photo storage and sharing direct from a mobile device, and video messaging. And that's what G+ is really about: integration and collaboration.
A few weeks before Google+ was launched, the company announced something else that seemed to slip through the net of public/blogger consciousness: the Chromebook. The concept behind this is of a new type of computer unlike a laptop or a tablet that is solely designed to connect to the web. It does nothing else except browse the internet, so it's very cheap and it's very fast. And it's built on Google's Chrome OS, which has been two years in development. Does Google want to compete with Facebook? Sure it does, but what it really wants to do is to own the cloud. And Android, paired with this suite of cloud-based products, is one hell of a convincing argument.
So who should really be worried about Google? Facebook has 750 million users; it would take an awful lot of traction to get that moving to Google+ and I think Google knows that. Facebook has time to tweak its system and its security, copy a few G+ features and improve its mobile offering. Twitter and LinkedIn, while not quite as secure, also have loyal user bases and have developed their own niches. Twitter breaks the news, LinkedIn is viewed as the ruling business network. Again, they should be safe if they adapt and improve, at least in the short to mid-term. Long-term, all three need to up their game. And the much-hyped diaspora would seem to be dead in the water.
But what of Apple and Microsoft? Well Apple is notorious for continued innovation and is already in the running for ownership of at least part of the cloud with the iCloud solution. The name might be predictable but Apple is highly regarded by hoards of loyal users and it’s difficult to see it coming unstuck just yet. But Microsoft…well, that’s a different story. Despite the step forward with Windows 7, the system is widely loathed. Microsoft hasn’t made any significant innovations in many years and, chiefly, is falling a long way behind in the race for mobile supremacy. The Windows OS is pretty horrible compared to Android and the iOS, and Microsoft is starting to feel like a dinosaur when compared with cool Apple and innovative Google.
If I were Bill Gates, I’d be investing some of my $56 billion fortune back into my company pretty sharp. What do you think?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
Take a step back from social media for a moment and view Google+ as just one element of Google's strategy. What do you see? GMail, arguably the leading email solution available that works from the cloud. Google Docs, increasingly being used as a collaboration tool and again, stored in the cloud. The Chrome web browser. Android, the fastest growing mobile OS that is likely to take over from Apple within the next 12 months. YouTube, Picassa, Reader and Blogger, all of which work from, guess where? The cloud. Add in Google+ and you now have social networking, photo storage and sharing direct from a mobile device, and video messaging. And that's what G+ is really about: integration and collaboration.
A few weeks before Google+ was launched, the company announced something else that seemed to slip through the net of public/blogger consciousness: the Chromebook. The concept behind this is of a new type of computer unlike a laptop or a tablet that is solely designed to connect to the web. It does nothing else except browse the internet, so it's very cheap and it's very fast. And it's built on Google's Chrome OS, which has been two years in development. Does Google want to compete with Facebook? Sure it does, but what it really wants to do is to own the cloud. And Android, paired with this suite of cloud-based products, is one hell of a convincing argument.
So who should really be worried about Google? Facebook has 750 million users; it would take an awful lot of traction to get that moving to Google+ and I think Google knows that. Facebook has time to tweak its system and its security, copy a few G+ features and improve its mobile offering. Twitter and LinkedIn, while not quite as secure, also have loyal user bases and have developed their own niches. Twitter breaks the news, LinkedIn is viewed as the ruling business network. Again, they should be safe if they adapt and improve, at least in the short to mid-term. Long-term, all three need to up their game. And the much-hyped diaspora would seem to be dead in the water.
But what of Apple and Microsoft? Well Apple is notorious for continued innovation and is already in the running for ownership of at least part of the cloud with the iCloud solution. The name might be predictable but Apple is highly regarded by hoards of loyal users and it’s difficult to see it coming unstuck just yet. But Microsoft…well, that’s a different story. Despite the step forward with Windows 7, the system is widely loathed. Microsoft hasn’t made any significant innovations in many years and, chiefly, is falling a long way behind in the race for mobile supremacy. The Windows OS is pretty horrible compared to Android and the iOS, and Microsoft is starting to feel like a dinosaur when compared with cool Apple and innovative Google.
If I were Bill Gates, I’d be investing some of my $56 billion fortune back into my company pretty sharp. What do you think?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
July 19, 01:21 AM
There’s been a noticeable shift in the blogosphere over the last few weeks, and I’m really not sure I like it. We (and I use the term loosely) seem to be reversing up our own bottoms at a rate of knots. Whether it’s the MD of a PR agency sulking after he gave up his blog because he “rarely had anything to say and couldn’t find an audience” or whether it’s a hugely respected blogger listing out seven blogging heroes who don’t care what you think, it’s all getting a bit holier-than-thou. And it sucks.
With the former, said MD goes as far as to conclude that writing a blog probably isn’t worth the effort for PRs. What a load of absolute cobblers. Blogging teaches any PR an awful lot about social communications and is a major part of the modern PR arsenal. How out of touch do you have to be to think that a PR can’t learn anything about social networking, SEO, writing styles, engagement, Twitter, relationship building, analytics or numerous other facets of modern PR by learning to blog? As Steve Earl said in response to me on Twitter: “PRs are communicators. Blogging is part of communication.” It’s quite simply shockingly bad advice.
That all said, it’s the latter (the bloggers who don’t care what you think), posts of this ilk and more specifically, the comments that go along with them, that’s really starting to annoy and to disappoint me. I don’t think anyone would argue that there are an awful lot of duplicitous and superfluous social media/PR blogs out there (this one probably included). But does that mean we shouldn’t bother or voice our own opinions? Of course not. Rebecca Woodhead said within the comments of a post on SpinSucks: “ I'm a bit peeved about the narkiness of the network. Can't people stop being snarky and just be interested in each other?” And, though I've used that comment slightly out of context here, I couldn’t agree more.
No matter how it’s evolved, blogging is essentially all about sharing personal ideas, opinions and beliefs. Sure, some are better than others at doing so and some do seem to regurgitate what others have written with little original input, or to write about the same old topics. But whatever happened to tolerance? Why do we feel the need to put down what others are doing? If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Simple.
With specific regard to not caring what others think, I sincerely hope that isn’t the case. I have a lot of respect for some of the people on that list and am friends with a couple, but if I thought they didn’t care what their readers thought of them I’d unsubscribe right now (although ironically of course, they wouldn’t care). Being bold, controversial, challenging and original is one thing, but being arrogant would be quite another. Aside from this, however, posts such as that one (and there are several others recently) together with the LiveFyre plugin that tweets or Facebooks everyone to know that X has mentioned Y in a comment are a little unnecessary and self-congratulatory. It smacks of a high school in-crowd that’s exclusionary to the other kids. And maybe, just maybe, that’s why guys like the PR agency MD I mentioned beforehand develop such poor opinions about blogging and pass those on to juniors.
So how about we cut the pious and sanctimonious rubbish before it changes the blogosphere for good, and focus on making what we write relevant, interesting and original, rather than putting down others or blowing smoke up the arses of our peers?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
With the former, said MD goes as far as to conclude that writing a blog probably isn’t worth the effort for PRs. What a load of absolute cobblers. Blogging teaches any PR an awful lot about social communications and is a major part of the modern PR arsenal. How out of touch do you have to be to think that a PR can’t learn anything about social networking, SEO, writing styles, engagement, Twitter, relationship building, analytics or numerous other facets of modern PR by learning to blog? As Steve Earl said in response to me on Twitter: “PRs are communicators. Blogging is part of communication.” It’s quite simply shockingly bad advice.
That all said, it’s the latter (the bloggers who don’t care what you think), posts of this ilk and more specifically, the comments that go along with them, that’s really starting to annoy and to disappoint me. I don’t think anyone would argue that there are an awful lot of duplicitous and superfluous social media/PR blogs out there (this one probably included). But does that mean we shouldn’t bother or voice our own opinions? Of course not. Rebecca Woodhead said within the comments of a post on SpinSucks: “ I'm a bit peeved about the narkiness of the network. Can't people stop being snarky and just be interested in each other?” And, though I've used that comment slightly out of context here, I couldn’t agree more.
No matter how it’s evolved, blogging is essentially all about sharing personal ideas, opinions and beliefs. Sure, some are better than others at doing so and some do seem to regurgitate what others have written with little original input, or to write about the same old topics. But whatever happened to tolerance? Why do we feel the need to put down what others are doing? If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Simple.
With specific regard to not caring what others think, I sincerely hope that isn’t the case. I have a lot of respect for some of the people on that list and am friends with a couple, but if I thought they didn’t care what their readers thought of them I’d unsubscribe right now (although ironically of course, they wouldn’t care). Being bold, controversial, challenging and original is one thing, but being arrogant would be quite another. Aside from this, however, posts such as that one (and there are several others recently) together with the LiveFyre plugin that tweets or Facebooks everyone to know that X has mentioned Y in a comment are a little unnecessary and self-congratulatory. It smacks of a high school in-crowd that’s exclusionary to the other kids. And maybe, just maybe, that’s why guys like the PR agency MD I mentioned beforehand develop such poor opinions about blogging and pass those on to juniors.
So how about we cut the pious and sanctimonious rubbish before it changes the blogosphere for good, and focus on making what we write relevant, interesting and original, rather than putting down others or blowing smoke up the arses of our peers?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
July 15, 05:11 AM
What a load of rubbish, right? Like you wouldn’t know if you were part of a cult. Well I’m telling you now that every single day of your life you display behavioural traits that put you firmly in the land of Heaven’s Gate, the Order of the Solar Temple and Scientology. I’m aware that this is a challenging statement, but hear me out.
The word ‘cult’ refers to a group of people who are unquestioningly devoted to an idea or a practice. It implies blind faith, an unbroken ritual that you’re probably not even aware of or wouldn’t consider remotely as out of the ordinary. And I’m saying that you’re a part of such a group. So what do you do that qualifies you? You use internet search engines.
Assuming you haven’t dismissed me as a deluded loon and you’re still reading this, give it some thought for a moment. What do you do if you want to find out about a product or service? You Google it. What about if you need directions? You Google it. And what if you want to know what time a movie’s on? You Google it.
Prior to undertaking the #NoSearch project, I did some research among my friends, colleagues and networks, and two thirds of the people I asked said that, on average, they use a search engine more than ten times per day. They don’t think about it, they just do it, and they have 100% trust in the results that they get back when they click the search button. Now do you see where I’m coming from? Ritualistic practices...blind faith...unquestioning devotion...
The upshot is that Google, Yahoo! and Bing have immense power over you and me and the way we perceive the world. You can even argue that SEO professionals and advertisers alike seek to exploit our reliance and complete trust in search engines by manipulating what we see via the organic SERPs and PPC adverts alike. If Google is Waco’s Davidians, the multi-million dollar SEO industry is its David Koresh, seeking to subvert our thinking, behaviour and decision making.
#NoSearch is (thankfully) nearing an end now, and in a couple of weeks time I’ll be back in the world of the search engine. But there’s been something quite invigorating and inspiring about stepping away from searching the interwebs for a couple of months. I’ll be revealing more of my learnings here from both a personal and professional perspective over the next few weeks. One of which being that virtually every single person I’ve encountered has totally missed what Google’s doing with G+. But more of that next week.
So, search engines: cult or no cult?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
The word ‘cult’ refers to a group of people who are unquestioningly devoted to an idea or a practice. It implies blind faith, an unbroken ritual that you’re probably not even aware of or wouldn’t consider remotely as out of the ordinary. And I’m saying that you’re a part of such a group. So what do you do that qualifies you? You use internet search engines.
Assuming you haven’t dismissed me as a deluded loon and you’re still reading this, give it some thought for a moment. What do you do if you want to find out about a product or service? You Google it. What about if you need directions? You Google it. And what if you want to know what time a movie’s on? You Google it.
Prior to undertaking the #NoSearch project, I did some research among my friends, colleagues and networks, and two thirds of the people I asked said that, on average, they use a search engine more than ten times per day. They don’t think about it, they just do it, and they have 100% trust in the results that they get back when they click the search button. Now do you see where I’m coming from? Ritualistic practices...blind faith...unquestioning devotion...
The upshot is that Google, Yahoo! and Bing have immense power over you and me and the way we perceive the world. You can even argue that SEO professionals and advertisers alike seek to exploit our reliance and complete trust in search engines by manipulating what we see via the organic SERPs and PPC adverts alike. If Google is Waco’s Davidians, the multi-million dollar SEO industry is its David Koresh, seeking to subvert our thinking, behaviour and decision making.
#NoSearch is (thankfully) nearing an end now, and in a couple of weeks time I’ll be back in the world of the search engine. But there’s been something quite invigorating and inspiring about stepping away from searching the interwebs for a couple of months. I’ll be revealing more of my learnings here from both a personal and professional perspective over the next few weeks. One of which being that virtually every single person I’ve encountered has totally missed what Google’s doing with G+. But more of that next week.
So, search engines: cult or no cult?
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
Updates
-
@sarahrajabalee Especially for you: http://t.co/tbPqb1Ap
-
Like! > You Might Be A Social Media Spammer (And Not Know It) http://t.co/AhvdJ5Op via @meloniedodaro
-
Excellent post on the battle to achieve blogging success from @deepexistence http://t.co/NFnnqDGj
-
Um...*head explodes* > Google Knowledge Graph: Going Beyond Semantics http://t.co/yQtQMXmc via @leesmallwood
-
My absolute 100% favourite link of the week: Top 10 Eric Cantona Quotes http://t.co/VIYSRVy6
-
@gugss 6.
-
@dannywhatmough Yeah, easy for me to be snarky from 60 miles away. Useful day so far?
-
@dannywhatmough Would you please tell him you can't *do* social media full stop please? > http://t.co/vIlkzZ26 Ta :o)
-
@lunchboxworld Yes indeed. Very busy & things going well for us.
-
@charliesaidthat They're very different to yours. More opinion-based: http://t.co/0HyQLQNj
-
@lunchboxworld will take a read...
-
Inspiring story for those who question blogging > Punching through blogging barriers to find business benefits http://t.co/bDP7XJ1r
-
@dannywhatmough Our CEO Claire is there, so I'll be careful what I say... :o)
-
@dannywhatmough Ah yes, was going to come to that but work got in the way. Pretty shocking then...?!
-
@dannywhatmough Where are you if that's the case?
-
"Cognitive Dissonance." One of my very favourite phrases. There.
-
@charliesaidthat Going to take a look at the web psychologist. Sounds interesting.
-
1 question #poll: What do you feel is a reasonable response time for a customer service enquiry on Twitter? http://t.co/6NKNelpC
-
@kt_little Have you talked to @CloudNineRec ? You should. Steve, meet Katie - she's looking for a job in social...
-
@jangles @JimConnolly Cool. Let me know how it goes.
Profile
Integrating social PR 2.0 tools with offline campaigns to deliver maximum business benefit
Public Relations and Communications | Oxford, United Kingdom, GB
Summary
I'm Head of Social Communications at BOTTLE PR. I'm a digital marketing, PR and marketing communications professional with 15 years’ agency and client-side experience. I'm fascinated by the convergence of PR, SEO and the web, and am passionate about social media, digital content creation and the promotion of brands and organisations through online channels. My focus is on devising strategic PR 2.0 campaigns and delivering tactical activities to meet business goals. I also write my own social media blog and am published on leading industry sites such as Social Media Today and Ragan.com.
Specialties: PR 2.0, social media, digital marketing, copywriting, content creation, seo, account management,
Experience
- Apr 2010 - PresentHead of Social Communications / BOTTLE PRI'm responsible for building Bottle PR's digital credibility and directing its social media strategy, both internally and externally. I drive new business and ensure that all clients (current and potential) are getting maximum impact from social media. Part of the role also involves tracking social business trends and training consultants on varying aspects of social media tools.
- Mar 2009 - PresentDigital Media Director / CirkleMy role was to build the agency’s digital credibility and direct its social media strategy. This incorporated a new company blog, multiple Twitter streams, a YouTube channel, a Flickr photostream, a Facebook page and a new, social media-driven company website. I promoted the agency’s digital capabilities to current clients and educated them on the benefits of social media marketing, as well as wrote thought leadership articles for journals such as PR Week and Marketing Magazine on evolving communications. My work won a Consumer Relations award in the 2009 PRide Award for Healthcare Connections, a campaign focused on credibly communicating the benefits though digital media of buying Tamiflu during the swine flu outbreak. A social media thought leadership seminar I organised in November 2009 created social media opportunities among 25 senior professionals from organisations including Pepsico, Glaxo SmithKline, Premier Foods, Remington and Energizer.
- Jan 2007 - PresentDirector of Marketing Communications / The Pet ExtraordinariumI devised and directed the brand and marketing strategy for my own start-up online retail business, coordinating online marketing campaigns with marketing and sales affiliates and controlling a full SEO campaign, including both on- and off-page optimisation as well as a Google AdWords PPC campaign. Generating and writing additional content for the website and running the company blog were later major parts of the role, as was managing and directing all creative and advertising initiatives as well as social media marketing via Twitter and Facebook. The company achieved revenue growth of 370% between May and December 2008 and won a Highly Commended accolade as Retailer of the Year in the 2008 GLEE Awards, the UK’s biggest leisure-focused awards scheme, for its brand-led approach. It was listed in The Guardian newspaper as one of the UK’s top independent retailers in December 2007. I sold the company early in 2010.
- Sept 2005 - PresentCreative Director / BOTTLE PRI directed creative strategy across the agency’s entire client base, devising bespoke, creative promotional strategies that encompassed the full marketing mix, from PR to advertising, corporate literature and web solutions. This was achieved managing a team of creative personnel, including PR consultants, an exhibition specialist, graphic designer, web designer and support staff, and by copywriting all kinds of promotional copy, including press releases and articles for the print and online press, website pages, advertising, corporate brochures, newsletters and direct mail. I also assisted the company’s joint Managing Directors with all aspects of the running of the agency and promotional/new business strategy.
- Jun 2004 - PresentAccount Director / Primal PRI directed the strategy for the agency’s biggest client, a portfolio of eight individual accounts worth approximately £450,000. This encompassed devising bespoke, creative promotional strategies and campaigns that accurately addressed the client’s target audience, including high profile launches and events, celebrity endorsement, incentive promotions, publicity ‘stunts’ and media relations. I managed a team of three to ensure that tactical initiatives were delivered on time, maximum results were achieved and excellent return on client investment produced. I also managed and developed existing and new client relationships, developing business and ensuring maximum profitability for the agency.
Education
-
1992 - 1995Bournemouth UniversityBusiness & Finance in Business Management, Marketing, PR, Communications, Financial Management
Additional Information
Websites:
Interests:
My family (married with 1 daughter), music, comedy, theatre, restaurants, movies, football, blogging, social media
Updates
-
One of my favourite past-times: watching the Facebook ticker for the random pages that comms people Like as part of their job :o)Posted 20 hours ago
-
Gabrielle Laine-Peters & Andrew Grill: spot on event last night, guys. Lots to be said for shooting the breeze with a roomful of like-minded people. Thanks very much.Posted 3 days ago
-
FOOTBALL FANS: lend my your ears. If I was a Chelsea fan, I’d be delighted this morning. If I was a Spurs fan, I’d be totally frustrated and a little depressed. Oh, hang on...I am Spurs fan. It is perfectly correct that Chelsea should be able to defend the trophy they won last night next season, and I 100% agree with the ruling that defending champions are automatically entered into the following season’s competition. But it is perfectly WRONG that this should be at the expense of another team that has legitimately qualified. Spurs played a 38 game season over 9 months and finished 4th to qualify for the Champions League. Leaving aside that, as perpetual underachievers we should have finished 3rd by some margin and even blew a chance to do so in the second-last game of the season, they did the job they set out to do in August. Why then, can UEFA not build in an automatic qualifying spot for the winners, leaving one less qualifying space available from THE START OF THE SEASON irrespective of resident country? If, as normally happens, the winners have already qualified through their league position, an ADDITIONAL spot becomes available for a country using UEFA’s normal ranking system. It’s not rocket science is it? Why penalise one team in a given country due to the success of another team from the same country? That makes no sense whatsoever. Even Chelsea and A*****l fans can’t disagree with that, surely? For my own peace of mind if nothing else, hit Like if you agree with me, folks...Posted 4 days ago
-
I've asked a Question today via the BOTTLE PR page about whether or not you'd invest in Facebook. What I'd really love on top of that, if you have time, is a brief comment backing up your yes or no that I can use in a blog post. Either drop one below or message me...? Pretty please??Posted 6 days ago
-
has joined Like Minds at wearelikeminds.comPosted 7 days ago
-
Based on the England squad just announced, we could field a team as follows: Ruddy; Jones, Baines, Lescott, Cahill; Oxlade-Chaimberlain, Downing, Milner, Young; Carroll, Welback. WTF?!Posted 8 days ago
-
Gini Dietrich & Geoff Livingston: Just thought I'd drop you guys a quick note to say congratulations on the launch of the book. Looks like your Chicago launch was great fun. Look forward to reading it when I can get my hands on a copy :o)Posted 10 days ago
-
Since when did the FA Cup final kick off at 5.15pm?! What's wrong with 3pm? Am slightly outraged...Posted 2 weeks ago
-
I can confirm that the rumours are true. I am indeed, once more, the Mayor of Sandy Balls. It is a position in which I hold great pride.Posted 2 weeks ago
-
Just had a hair cut. There was a rather disturbing amount of either platinum blond or grey in what was taken off, depending on your perspective.Posted 3 weeks ago
-
So I'm pitching in London today. Fine, except I've been ill for a few days and I look and feel like shit. You've got to feel for Claire Dunford who I'm pitching with. It'll be a miracle if they don't just turf me out on arrival. As the saying goes, you can't polish a turd...Posted 4 weeks ago
Photos
Recent tracks
-
Dark Night by {u'mbid': u'a8176337-b4a9-442b-b874-4fe696aaf552', u'#text': u'Ganga'}11 months ago
-
Frisky by {u'mbid': u'2da63568-76c2-4ab5-874f-bacbf4a8cbc9', u'#text': u'Leggo Beast'}11 months ago
-
Breather (Eric Kupper mix) by {u'mbid': u'ab2241c7-ff64-4b52-90d8-4a7b0517d47c', u'#text': u'Afterlife'}11 months ago
-
Elysian Fields by {u'mbid': u'463a94f1-2713-40b1-9c88-dcc9c0170cae', u'#text': u'Minus 8'}11 months ago
-
100 Billion Stars by {u'mbid': u'e8ea7f9b-641b-4547-af46-1444038a9ee0', u'#text': u'Lux'}11 months ago
-
Atlantis by {u'mbid': u'73a2daa7-9469-4789-bd2d-41c48831d614', u'#text': u'Rue du Soleil'}11 months ago
-
Smooth by {u'mbid': u'2c51776d-25d8-49b6-8663-4dda1d3b386e', u'#text': u'Alex Cortiz'}11 months ago
-
Techno Powers by {u'mbid': u'b4265534-cf8f-4a8f-827d-fc490ccd15b8', u'#text': u'A Man Called Adam'}11 months ago
-
Maja by {u'mbid': u'9a6c053b-6547-4a8e-855d-460ae08a3e11', u'#text': u'Cantoma'}11 months ago
-
People Among Us by {u'mbid': u'd98b3f60-7a4c-400d-a3bc-6e123b12727c', u'#text': u'Bliss'}11 months ago
Top artists
Top tracks
-
5 plays
-
5 plays
-
Devil Inside by INXS4 plays
-
4 plays
-
4 plays
-
4 plays
-
4 plays
-
4 plays
-
4 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
Money To Burn by Gun3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
-
3 plays
Latest checkin
-
@The Hospital Club (24 Endell St.)3 days ago in Covent Garden, London
Badges
Checkin history
-
@The Hospital Club (24 Endell St.)3 days ago
-
2 weeks ago
-
3 weeks ago
-
3 weeks ago
-
3 weeks ago
-
3 weeks ago
-
@Queen Mary's College (QMC) (Cliddesden Rd)5 months ago
-
@Portland House (10 Portland House)5 months ago
-
@Didcot Parkway Railway Station (DID) (Station Rd.)6 months ago
-
@grosvenor house hotel (Park Lane)7 months ago
-
@TUC Congress House (28 Great Russell St)8 months ago
-
@Castle Drogo (Drewsteignton)8 months ago
-
8 months ago
-
@Le Manoir Aux Quat Saisons Hotel (Church Rd.)8 months ago
-
@John Radcliffe Hospital (Headley Way)9 months ago
-
@Delfina Studio Cafe (50 Bermondsey Street)10 months ago
-
10 months ago
-
@The Fighting Cocks (Southampton Rd.)11 months ago
